However, as Juxon and Sir Charles rode back slowly to Milverton after the violent scene which might have terminated so awfully for both, he was determined not to lose so favourable an occasion for setting before the softened transgressor the great and common evil of man’s nature, and the blessed remedy. He did this with a feeling, a faithfulness, and a humility which surprized and affected his silent companion greatly, and which at last drew from him a confession of a most interesting kind. He told Juxon that, from his earliest childhood, he had found himself an object of dislike and aversion to all his family; that his elder brother, his senior only by one year, had been the indulged and favoured pet both of his father and mother, while he had been always either treated with neglect or addressed in the language of unkindness and reproach; that hate had begotten hate, and that he had passed his early youth hating and hateful; that at the age of sixteen, as his brother was out shooting on the manor, he lost his life by the accidental discharge of his own gun, as he was carelessly forcing his way through some thick furze bushes. He confessed that he was inwardly rejoiced at this calamity; that he looked upon the corpse without one emotion of sorrow or even of pity, and that he viewed with a malignant satisfaction the agony of his parents, more especially that of his mother, whose persecution of him had been perpetual, and of a petty and irritating nature. This feeling of his was so irrepressible as to be seen. The thought that their despised boy should inherit the estates and the title had proved so very intolerable to his mother that she could not endure his presence at home. He was therefore sent away, and placed under the charge of a severe tutor, who, finding him the ignorant and evil-disposed youth which the letters of his father had represented him, governed him with strictness, and instructed him with an evident contempt for his want of capacity and for his backwardness in those attainments which, in truth, it had been impossible for him to acquire; it having been the mean pleasure of his mother to deny him the advantages enjoyed by his brother. He related the story of his mother’s funeral, to which he was called after an absence of two years, and the death of his father, which had taken place four years later, while he himself was abroad. It appeared by these accounts that subsequent to the death of his brother he had never enjoyed or indeed desired any intercourse with his parents, and that when he came to take possession of the estates, he found his sisters, who were much younger than himself, grown up and left to his protection. As they were not mixed up in his mind with the injuries of his childhood, such little kindness as he had ever felt capable of he had entertained for them. But even here he stated he had found disappointment; for one being timid and of no character, feared