“Be calm, sir, and grant me a patient hearing, and you shall hear the subject on which I have come to obtain your father's opinion; and failing that, yours--for, as I have said, Mr. Bramleigh, a day or two more may make the case one for your own decision. And now, without entering into the history of the affair, I will simply say that an old claim against your father's entailed estates has been recently revived, and under circumstances of increased importance; that I have been, for some time back, in negotiation to arrange this matter by a compromise, and with every hope of success; but that the negotiations have been unexpectedly broken off by the demands of the claimant,--demands so far above all calculation, and, indeed, I may say above all fairness,--that I have come over to ask whether your father will accede to them or accept the issue of the law as to his right.” Augustus sat like one stunned by a heavy blow, not utterly unconscious, but so much overcome and so confused that he could not venture to utter a word. “I see I have shocked you by my news, Mr. Bramleigh; but these are things not to be told by halves.” “I know nothing of all this; I never so much as heard of it,” gasped out Augustus. “Tell me all that you know about it.” “That would be a somewhat long story,” said the other, smiling; “but I can, in a short space, tell you enough to put the main facts before you, and enable you to see that the case is, with all its difficulties of proof, a very weighty and serious one, and not to be dismissed, as your father once opined, as the mere menace of a needy adventurer.”