“No doubt,” answered Creel, with a little dry snigger, “that is strictly so. The man’s possessions were forfeit of right to the Crown, it being his good fortune only that he passed unhung of the law that he had defied. But--his guilt being conjectural, and not, as it were, brought home to him--your father, in one of those Canterbury-gallops of conscience wherewith honest souls sometimes over-ride our fears for their guilelessness, would consider it no duty of his to forego the estate quixotically, and for a supposition of which the law had failed to take cognizance. ‘But,’ said he, ‘I will not throw the first stone at him whose immunity is my profit. And, as to the estate, I can apply it--saving the grace of his majesty, whose means are not restricted--to some worthy purpose which was doubtless forecast by the Providence that hath conducted the matter so far.’ And in this he was firm--not to outlaw the dead man, though he took no personal advantage of his bequest. ‘For,’ he declared, ‘he meant well by me, when all is said and done.’” Mr. Tuke rose, and the attorney with him. “I suppose,” said the former, rather sadly, “that no man may profit by repentance so far as to lay the ghost of his past. ’Tis the privilege of the virtuous to hunt down reformed sinners with the spectre-hounds of their own dead passions. I have sought honestly to redeem my name, and to do my best with the new life offered me. Yet, should I have accepted the trust, had I known in what spirit its reversion to me was conceived?” “I hope so,” said the other; “for love, under all the show of rigour, prompted the bequest.” He spoke with some deprecation. Perhaps, in his heart, was a little protesting sympathy with his young friend’s point of view. “Well, sir,” answered the latter, “I will e’en take your word for it--for that it is the word of as generous and self-sacrificing a soul as ever stood between a saint and a scamp.” And with that they shook hands warmly and parted, Mr. Tuke going back to his lodgings in the “Adelphi,” where he had put up to be near his friends, who lay at the “Golden Cross” hard by. CHAPTER XXXI. Thus, at length, was Sir Robert the younger informed of the history of his inheritance. Thus, also, was it an aggravation of that wounding recital that, to all appearance, he might have earlier induced Mr. Creel to it--at a period when he himself was less bound to the conduct of a responsibility which he now knew he had undertaken upon terms that seemed to him unnecessarily humiliating, and which he could not but think he would surely otherwise have declined. For, if any love had dictated the gift--the new chance to a repentant prodigal--it was harder than Roman in its expression.