“And so those were Daniel and Augustus Mortimer’s sons.  Very fine young gentlemen too, one of them not over young, neither; he looked at least thirty.  Well, very mysterious were the ways of Providence!  Poor Cuthbert Melcombe, the eldest son, had left neither chick nor child; no more had poor Griffith, the youngest.  As for Peter, to be sure he had left children, but then he was gone himself.  And these that had behaved so bad to their blessed mother were all she had to stand by her grave.  It was very mysterious, but she was at rest now, and would never feel their undutifulness any more.”

It was about four o’clock on that summer-like afternoon that the mourners came home from the funeral.  The ladies for the sake of quiet retired with Peter to their rooms in the roof; the Mortimers, after partaking of a slight repast in the great parlour, stepped out and began to pace up and down before the house to refresh their spirits with a little air.

The will had been read in the morning, before the funeral took place.  Valentine Mortimer and John Mortimer, the two grandsons, were both present.  Valentine being a mere boy, barely eighteen, may well have been excused if he did not notice anything peculiar in the demeanour of the two old men; did not notice, as John Mortimer did, the restless excitement of both, and how they appeared to be sustaining and encouraging one another, and yet, when the important sentence came which left them without so much as a shilling, how bravely and soberly they took it, without the least betrayal of mortified feeling, without any change of countenance or even of attitude.

Valentine had often heard his father say that he had no expectations from his mother, that he was quite sure the property never would come to him.  He had believed this, and excepting that he found the preamble of the will solemn and the reading impressive, he did not take any special interest in it.

Every shilling and every acre were left to little Peter Melcombe, his mother being appointed his sole guardian till he reached the age of twelve years, and a request being added that her dear son Daniel would see to the repairing of the house, and the setting in order of the garden and woodland.

“And yet not a shilling left to either of them,” thought John.  “I always fancied there was some estrangement—­felt sure of it; but if my father and uncle were so far friendly with their mother that she could ask this favour, how odd that she leaves nothing, not so much as a remembrance, to either of them!  The eldest son, by all accounts, was a very violent, overbearing man; I’ve heard my father say as much; but he has been dead so long that, if there was any estrangement on his account, they must have made it up long ago.”

And now the funeral was over.  John Mortimer, taking the youth with him, was walking about among the pear-trees close to the garden-wall, and the two old brothers, who appeared to have a dislike to being separated, even for a moment, were leisurely walking on, and in silence looking about them.