“He left you nothing?”

“He left me his staff.  He knew better than to leave me money.  But I am bothered about that box of papers.  What can they refer to?  Eh?  What?”

“I can make a guess, William.  When your brother Tom left home, and went to India, he took money enough with him; but I’m afraid he got it queerly.  At any rate, your father had some big sums to raise.  You were at college at the time; and though there was some underhand talk, maybe you never heard it, for no one round Sandal-Side would pass on a word likely to trouble the old squire, or offend Mistress Charlotte.  Now, perhaps it was at that time Barf Latrigg ‘did well to Sandal.’”

“I think you may be right, Alice.  I remember that father was a bit mean with me the last year I was at Oxford.  He would have reasons he did not tell me of.  One should never judge a father.  He is often forced to cut the loaf unevenly for the good of every one.”

But this new idea troubled Sandal.  He was a man of super-sensitive honor with regard to money matters.  If there were really any obligation of that kind between the two houses, he hardly felt grateful to Latrigg for being silent about it.  And still more the transfer of these papers vexed him.  Ducie might know what he might never know.  Steve might have it in his power to trouble Harry when he was at rest with his fore-elders.  The subject haunted and worried him; and as worries are never complete worries till they have an individuality, Steve very soon became the personal embodiment of mortifying uncertainty, and wounded amour propre.  For if Mrs. Sandal’s suspicion were true, or even if it were not true, she was not likely to be the only one in Sandal-Side who would construe Latrigg’s singular disposition of his papers in the same way.  Certainly Squire William did not feel as if the dead man had ’done well to Sandal.’

Stephen was equally annoyed.  His grandfather had belonged to a dead century, and retained until the last his almost feudal idea of the bond between his family and the Sandals.  But the present squire had stepped outside the shadows of the past, and Stephen was fully abreast of his own times.  He understood very well, that, whatever these papers related to, they would be a constant thorn in Sandal’s side; and he saw them lying between Charlotte and himself, a barrier unknown, and insurmountable because unknown.

From Ducie he could obtain neither information nor assistance.  “Mother,” he asked, “do you know what those papers are about?”

“Ratherly.”

“When can you tell me?”

“There must be a deal of sorrow before I can tell you.”

“Do you want to tell me?”

“If I should dare to want it one minute, I should ask God’s pardon the next.  When I unlock that box, Steve, there is like to be trouble in Sandal.  I think your grandfather would rather the key rusted away.”

“Does the squire know any thing about them?”