“I don’t know how it will all be, sir; but if the property is to be mine—­”

“It will be yours; it must be yours.”

“Then I will do anything for him that he will accept.”

“Do not let him starve, or have to earn his bread.”

“Say what you wish, sir, and it shall be done, as far as I can do it.”

“Make an offer to him of some income, and settle it on him.  Do it at once.”  The old man, as he said this, was thinking probably of the great danger that all Tretton might, before long, have been made to vanish.  “And, Mountjoy—­”

“Sir.”

“You have gambled surely enough for amusement.  With such a property as this in your hands gambling becomes very serious.”

They were the last words,—­the last intelligible words,—­which the old man spoke.  He died with his left hand on his son’s neck, and took Merton and his sister by his side.  It was a death-bed not without its lesson,—­not without a certain charm in the eyes of some fancied beholder.  Those who were there seemed to love him well, and should do so.

He had contrived, in spite of his great faults, to create a respect in the minds of those around him, which is itself a great element of love.  But there was something in his manner which told of love for others.  He was one who could hate to distraction, and on whom no bonds of blood would operate to mitigate his hatred.  He would persevere to injure with a terrible persistency; but yet in every phase of his life he had been actuated by love for others.  He had never been selfish, thinking always of others rather than of himself.  Supremely indifferent he had been to the opinion of the world around him, but he had never run counter to his own conscience.  For the conventionalities of the law he entertained a supreme contempt, but he did wish so to arrange matters with which he was himself concerned as to do what justice demanded.  Whether he succeeded in the last year of his life the reader may judge.  But certainly the three persons who were assembled around his death-bed did respect him, and had been made to love him by what he had done.

Merton wrote the next morning to his friend Henry Annesley respecting the scene.  “The poor old boy has gone at last, and, in spite of all his faults, I feel as though I had lost an old friend.  To me he has been most kind, and did I not know of all his sins I should say that he had been always loyal and always charitable.  Mr. Grey condemns him, and all the world must condemn him.  One cannot make an apology for him without being ready to throw all truth and all morality to the dogs.  But if you can imagine for yourself a state of things in which neither truth nor morality shall be thought essential, then old Mr. Scarborough would be your hero.  He was the bravest man I ever knew.  He was ready to look all opposition in the face, and prepared to bear it down.  And whatever he did, he did with the view of accomplishing what he thought to be right for other people.  Between him and his God I cannot judge, but he believed in an Almighty One, and certainly went forth to meet him without a fear in his heart.”