gradually got into the habit of showing to the perfidious eyes of his friend. Randal saw that the Squire had two characteristics which are very common amongst proprietors, and which might be invoked as antagonists to his warm fatherly love. First, the Squire was as fond of his estate as if it were a living thing, and part of his own flesh and blood; and in his lectures to Frank upon the sin of extravagance, the Squire always let out this foible:--"What was to become of the estate if it fell into the hands of a spendthrift? No man should make ducks and drakes of Hazeldean; let Frank beware of _that_," &c. Secondly, the Squire was not only fond of his lands, but he was jealous of them--that jealousy which even the tenderest father sometimes entertains towards their natural heirs. He could not bear the notion that Frank should count on his death; and he seldom closed an admonitory letter without repeating the information that Hazeldean was not entailed; that it was his to do with as he pleased through life and in death. Indirect menace of this nature rather wounded and galled than intimidated Frank; for the young man was extremely generous and high-spirited by nature, and was always more disposed to some indiscretion after such warnings to his self-interest, as if to show that those were the last kinds of appeal likely to influence him. By the help of such insights into the character of father and son, Randal thought he saw gleams of daylight illumining his own chance of the lands of Hazeldean. Meanwhile it appeared to him obvious that, come what might of it, his own interests could not lose, and might most probably gain, by whatever could alienate the Squire from his natural heir. Accordingly, though with consummate tact, he instigated Frank towards the very excesses most calculated to irritate the Squire, all the while appealing rather to give the counter advice, and never sharing in any of the follies to which he conducted his thoughtless friend. In this he worked chiefly through others, introducing Frank to every acquaintance most dangerous to youth, either from the wit that laughs at prudence, or the spurious magnificence that subsists so handsomely upon bills endorsed by friends of "great expectations." The minister and his protégé were seated at breakfast, the first reading the newspaper, the last glancing over his letters; for Randal had arrived to the dignity of receiving many letters--ay, and notes too, three-cornered, and fantastically embossed. Egerton uttered an exclamation, and laid down the paper. Randal looked up from his correspondence. The minister had sunk into one of his absent reveries. After a long silence, observing that Egerton did not return to the newspaper, Randal said, "Ehem--sir, I have a note from Frank Hazeldean, who wants much to see me; his father has arrived in town unexpectedly." "What brings him here?" asked Egerton, still abstractedly.