He gave me the sheet he had begun with “Dear Mother,” and went on dictating.  It was not at all after Julius Caesar’s fashion of dictating.  He sat with his eyes on his own letter, and uttered one brief but ponderous sentence after another, each complete in all its parts, and quite unhesitating, though slowly uttered.  I gathered it up, wrote it down, said “Well,” and waited for more in silence, till, after I had looked at him once or twice to see whether he were asleep or in a reverie, another such sentence followed, and I began to know him very much better.

After saying “My hands have been lamed for a few days, and my aunt is so good as to write for me,” he went on to say, in forcible and not very affectionate terms, that “Smith must not think of coming home; Eustace could do nothing for him there, but as long as the family remained at Nelson their allowance should be increased by one hundred pounds a year.”  I filled up an order, which he signed on a Sydney bank for the first quarter.  “It must not be more,” he said, as he told me the sum, “or they will be taking their passage with it.”

“No more?” I asked, when he prepared to conclude this short letter.

“No.  Smith reads all her letters.”

“That is very hard on you.”

“She meant to do well for me, but it was a great mistake.  If Smith comes home to prey upon Eustace, it will be a bad business.”

“But he has no claim on Eustace, whatever he may think he has on you.”

“He is more likely to come now.  He knows he can get nothing out of me—­” Then, as I looked at the order, he added, “Beyond my mother’s rights.  Poor mother!”

I found that the schoolmaster had been induced to marry Alice Alison in the expectation that her share in the proceeds of Boola Boola would be much larger than it proved to be.  He had fawned on the two Eustaces, and obtained all he could from the elder, but, going too far at last, had been detected by the Sydney bank in what amounted to an embezzlement.  Prosecution was waived, and he was assisted to leave Australia and make a fresh start in New Zealand, whence he had never ceased to endeavour to gain whatever he could from Boola Boola.  He could twist Eustace round his finger, and Harold, though loathing and despising him, would do anything for his mother, but was resolved, for Eustace’s sake, to keep them at a distance, as could only be done by never allowing them a sufficient sum at once to obtain a passage home, and he knew the habits of Smith and his sons too well to expect them to save it.  In fact, the letter before him, which he ended by giving me to read, had been written by the poor woman at her husband’s dictation, in the belief that Harold was the heir, to demand their passage-money from him, and that there was a sad little postscript put in afterwards, unknown to her tyrant.  “My boy, don’t do it.  It will be much better for you not;” and, brave woman as she was, she added no entreaty that his refusal might be softened.  I asked if she had had any more children.  “No, happily,” was Harold’s answer.  “If I might only wring that fellow’s neck, I could take care of her.”  In fact, I should think, when he wanted to come within Harold’s grasp, he hardly knew what he asked.