“The old chap was hard and stern with her, and her life was a dull one, poor little girl,” thought the soldier; “and she’ll have a fine fortune, I suppose, now he’s gone; but somehow I don’t like to think of her left lonely in the world; she’s too young and too pretty, and too innocent for that. Innocent! why, bless her poor tender little heart, I don’t think she knows there’s such a thing as wickedness upon this earth.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IV. TREDETHLYN’S LUCK. Francis Tredethlyn had to wait a very long time before there could be any possibility of a letter from the Gray’s Inn solicitors, but he endured the delay with perfect tranquillity of mind; and if either of the two men seemed anxious for the arrival of the letter, that man was Harcourt Lowther, and not Francis Tredethlyn. The ensign had a trick of alluding to his servant’s good fortune whenever things went especially ill with himself. “Here am I without a friend in the world to lend me a five-pound note,” he would remark, impatiently, “and there are you with a chance of a nice little legacy from that old uncle of yours. I shouldn’t wonder if you stand in for four or five hundred at the least.” “I don’t think it, sir,” the valet always answered, coolly. “I’ve heard our neighbours say, that what with farming, what with mining, and dabbling a good bit with funds and railway shares, and such-like, my uncle must be as rich as a Jew; but for all that, I don’t look to be much better off for any thing that he’ll have left me. I suppose he’s left every thing to my cousin Susan, seeing that he had neither kith nor kin except her and me. But somehow or other I can’t imagine his parting with his money to any one, even after his death. I almost fancy that he’d rather have tied it up, if he could, so that the interest upon it would go on accumulating for ever and ever, thinking as he might perhaps, being old and eccentric, that he’d have a kind of satisfaction, even in his grave, from knowing that the money was going on getting more and more, instead of being spent or squandered.” Francis Tredethlyn did not make this remark in any spirit of ill-nature; he spoke like a man who states a plain fact. “I dare say he was a regular old curmudgeon,” Mr. Lowther answered, “but he must leave his money to some one, and the fact of these lawyers advertising for you is ample proof that he must have left some of it to you.”