Ripton hesitated an instant, and blundered out, with dubious articulation, “The Law of Gravelkind.”

“What Law?” said Sir Austin, perplexed.

“Gravelkind,” again rumbled Ripton’s voice.

Sir Austin turned to Mr. Thompson for an explanation.  The old lawyer was shaking his law-box.

“Singular!” he exclaimed.  “He will make that mistake!  What law, sir?”

Ripton read his error in the sternly painful expression of his father’s face, and corrected himself.  “Gavelkind, sir.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Thompson, with a sigh of relief.  “Gravelkind, indeed!  Gavelkind!  An old Kentish”—­He was going to expound, but Sir Austin assured him he knew it, and a very absurd law it was, adding, “I should like to look at your son’s notes, or remarks on the judiciousness of that family arrangement, if he had any.”

“You were making notes, or referring to them, as we entered,” said Mr. Thompson to the sucking lawyer; “a very good plan, which I have always enjoined on you.  Were you not?”

Ripton stammered that he was afraid he hid not any notes to show, worth seeing.

“What were you doing then, sir?”

“Making notes,” muttered Ripton, looking incarnate subterfuge.

“Exhibit!”

Ripton glanced at his desk and then at his father; at Sir Austin, and at the confidential clerk.  He took out his key.  It would not fit the hole.

“Exhibit!” was peremptorily called again.

In his praiseworthy efforts to accommodate the keyhole, Ripton discovered that the desk was already unlocked.  Mr. Thompson marched to it, and held the lid aloft.  A book was lying open within, which Ripton immediately hustled among a mass of papers and tossed into a dark corner, not before the glimpse of a coloured frontispiece was caught by Sir Austin’s eye.

The baronet smiled, and said, “You study Heraldry, too?  Are you fond of the science?”

Ripton replied that he was very fond of it—­extremely attached, and threw a further pile of papers into the dark corner.

The notes had been less conspicuously placed, and the search for them was tedious and vain.  Papers, not legal, or the fruits of study, were found, that made Mr. Thompson more intimate with the condition of his son’s exchequer; nothing in the shape of a remark on the Law of Gavelkind.

Mr. Thompson suggested to his son that they might be among those scraps he had thrown carelessly into the dark corner.  Ripton, though he consented to inspect them, was positive they were not there.

“What have we here?” said Mr. Thompson, seizing a neatly folded paper addressed to the Editor of a law publication, as Ripton brought them forth, one by one.  Forthwith Mr. Thompson fixed his spectacles and read aloud: 

        “To the Editor of the ‘Jurist.’

“Sir,—­In your recent observations on the great case of Crim”—­

Mr. Thompson hem’d! and stopped short, like a man who comes unexpectedly upon a snake in his path.  Mr. Beazley’s feet shuffled.  Sir Austin changed the position of an arm.