"However, with my advice, he has been led to conclude that he will adopt the law as a profession, and is anxious to be put in the way of it immediately, and do what he can to qualify himself for making his own bread in an honourable way. Can you believe it possible, my dear boy, that his father, on my appeal to him, absolutely refused either to help your cousin in his most laudable wish, or to explain to him why he did not? Oh, Ned, Ned, how miserable we can make ourselves when we get leave to do our own will! The man is wretched--you can read it in every line of his face; but he will not yield to open his heart to his boy, to receive him into his confidence, to make a friend of his only son. This miserable lucre--and I am sure in his better days, when your poor aunt was alive, nobody imagined that Scarsdale had set his heart much upon it--has turned his whole nature into gall. God forgive the miserable old man that left this curse behind him!--though, indeed, that is a useless wish, as he has been dead for fifteen years, and his fate determined long ago. "So you perceive, on the whole, I have had a good deal on my hands since I came here. Now that nothing can be done with his father, I mean to make an appeal on behalf of your cousin to one of the trustees. To tell you the truth, Ned, I am almost afraid now of the secret being made known to Horace. Your uncle has so forgotten that word, 'Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath,' that it absolutely alarms me when I think what may be the consequences if Horace hears it suddenly from any lips but his father's. So, if you should chance to come in contact with your cousin, my dear boy, see that you forget it, Ned. Let never an _appearance_ of knowledge be perceived in you--to be sure, this of itself is a kind of deceit, but it is lawful. If Scarsdale himself could be moved to disclose the whole to his son, a better state of affairs might be brought about--otherwise, I am alarmed to think of any discovery, more than I can say. "Not content with this business, I have taken in hand, like an old fool as I am, another young fellow, whom I have fallen in with here; a fine, sincere, hearty lad, whom I hope to hear of one day as your brother-in-arms. I have just been writing on his behalf to old Armitage, of the 59th, whom you remember, I daresay, when you were a child, and who knows this young fellow, of whom I'll tell you more hereafter. To-morrow I go home (D.V.), and will post this in Edinburgh, as I pass through, that you may know I have had a safe journey. I had a letter from Tom the day before I left. The rogue has got five or six prizes at the examination; but of course he has told you all about that before now. "God bless you, my dear boy; never forget the Gospel grace, and all we owe to it--nor your love and duty to our Father in Heaven. "E. SUTHERLAND." * * * * *