Two years afterwards a son of the head
ploughman that had gone to sea wrote to his
mother, saying he had met Master Rupert
in Calcutta, dressed in cavalry uniform; that he
knew him in a minute, although he was
very much altered. But that Master Rupert
denied his name, and refused to own to ever
having seen Bob Colter before. But Bob
was quite clear that it was the young Squire.
I went and told my master, who said
nothing at the time, but it seems set to
work with his London friends to buy Master
Rupert out. I did not know this at
the time. Long afterwards, when the Squire
fell sick of the illness he died of, I found
the letters under his pillow. First, there
was a letter from some one in India,
saying that they had seen the soldier
Thomas Rupertson, of the fiftieth K. O.
Light Cavalry, and that he had entirely
denied that he had any parents living, or
that he had any pretensions to be a gentleman;
and further said he should enter
some other regiment immediately if bought
out. There was another letter, saying that,
since the first had been written, private
Thomas Rupertson had died of a wound
received in a fight with some mounted
robbers. And the chaplain enclosed a lock
of his hair, and a portrait made on
something like glass, only tough, by an Indian.
Poor lad! it was the very moral of him;
though the thick dark moustaches and the
fierce look was very different to when he
used to go shepherding with me on his
rough pony,

Master Rupert's going was only the
beginning of our troubles.

Every year the Squire seemed to grow
richer. He could not help it; for, though the
home-farm was miserably managed, he spent
nothing to speak of, and was saving up his
rents, and laying them out every year on
interest. People came to him from all parts to
borrow money; and he sat up all night
besides the day, when he was not busy in the
farm, looking over parchments and counting
up money, and packing it up to take to the
Blexborough Bank.

The young ladies were growing up; but
he only seemed to notice them by fits and
starts. They were afraid of him, always
skulked out of the way, and only spoke in
whispers, or just Ay and Nay, before him,
though they could laugh loud enough behind
his back,—joking with the lads who made
an excuse to call when they knew the
Squire was at market or bank. Oh, but they
were bonny lasses, with colour like roses! but
strange and wild in their way as any young
jillies, and no one to look after them,—
scampering about the park on their ponies, with
their hair flying about their ears, and just an
old shawl or a horse-rug round their feet,
instead of a habit; or playing hide-and-seek
round the old hall. They were at the age
when sorrow and sad thoughts soon pass. So
poor Rupert was forgotten, except on winter
evenings round the fire.

Well, one day they were both missing : they
had gone off and married two wild fellows,
lawyer's clerks—not bad-looking chaps though
—who got acquainted with them in the park
while coming backwards and forwards to
raise money on writings for their master,
lawyer Johns,—Jesuit Johns they called him.
It was a sad business. First, the husbands
sued the Squire for their wives' share of their
mother's fortune; then, when they got it,
and found it not to be so much as they
expected, they ill-used the poor things.
Langston, that married Miss Georgy, gave
up the law and opened a public-house, where
all the racing and sporting fellows from the
High Moor training ground used to go; and
poor Miss Georgy, that always had a spirit of
her own, when Langston got in the way of
beating her, ran off with Captain Lurtcher
of the Lancers, the steeple-chase rider. What
became of her afterwards I don't know; but
they did say that she died in a London workhouse.
Miss Maria, the fair one, was always
a meek spirit; and when she found that
Sam Woods had only married her for her
money, she fretted away to a shadow, and
soon faded away altogether.

The next that left us was Master Norman,
the spoiled darling. He was a keen hand from
a child, and would take anything he could
lay his hands on. He cheated at marbles;
was never so happy as when he could get a
few halfpence and play pitch-and-toss with
the farm lads or the postilions down at the
Flying Childers. He took to betting by going
on the sly to his brother-in-law Langston's
public-house. How he got the money we
could not tell; but he came to be a regular
blackleg before he had a beard, at every
race he could steal away to. He finished
by breaking open the Squire's desk, when it
was full of the price of the wheat-stacks, and
going off to Doncaster, where we heard he
won a sight of money. He never showed
again until he was come of age. Then he
drove up, dressed like a lord, in a curricle,
with two men servants, a bulldog, and a
black-faced blackguard-looking dandy fellow
alongside of him. The Squire was getting
feeble then, but more fond of money than
ever. Norman frightened him so, that he
was glad to give him more than his share
of his mother's fortune down on the nail, to
get rid of him. When he heard what had
become of his sisters, the boy cursed and
swore awfully. From what his groom said,
it seemed as if he had brought the black-looking
dandy to marry one of his sisters. His
last words were to warn the Squire that he
should be back in a year for more cash.
But he never came; for he was upset and
killed coming from Newmarket spring meeting,
the year before we heard of Mr. Rupert's
death.

So there was none left but Mr. Charles,