The next morning, after a tête-à-tête breakfast, for Francia kept her room,
Fergus and Neria drove to Cragness.

Nancy Brume opened the door to them, and in answer to Mrs. Vaughn's inquiry,
said that Doctor Luttrell had left upon the previous evening.

“And though the old place ain't the delightsomest of housen at the best,”
pursued the worthy woman, as she opened the door to the library passage, “it's
perked up wonderful since he took his black favored [illeg.] and his cat's eyes
out'n it.”

[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]

In the library, with closed doors, and with the solemn mystery ever brooding
more or less tangibly over the house and its inmates, boldly confronting and as
it were daring her to its solution, Neria sank into the arm-chair of the bay window,
her sensitive organization succumbing, even while her spirit rose to the
crisis which instinctively she felt approaching.

Before her dazed eyes the dim room seemed to reel and shimmer like objects
seen through mirage; the black books crowding the shelves on every side seemed
gathering momentum for a forward plunge, which should bury the intruders beneath
an avalanche of dead men's thoughts and fancies—thoughts and fancies
which, instead of peacefully perishing with the brains where they were bred, had
been condemned to some such life-in-death as befell the maiden chilled to sleep
for a hundred years, in company with the bear, the crocodile and the serpent.
Above the fireplace the knight in his golden armor seemed stirring in his saddle,
and fixing, through his visor, eyes of gloomy menace upon the irreverent descendants
of his house who dared attempt to pluck from his hand the secret of
a lifetime. From the dusty corner, where stood the organ, shadowy forms
seemed to wave hands of ominous warning, to sigh and moan in a voiceless
lamentation that their realm was to be invaded, their unnamed charge to be
snatched from their guardianship.

Doubt, mystery and menace embodied themselves on every hand, expressed
themselves in every form the place contained, except in the figure of the man
who stood upright in their midst, strong, hard, unimpressible, and regnant.

Upon his thoughtful face Neria's eyes at last rested, and there found support
and reliance. Fergus was the first to speak.

“This secret, Neria,” said he, slowly, “is one that must now be known. If
Reginald Vaughn had been a man of decision and character he would never
have left it for us to settle the quarrel between himself and his conscience,
which seems to have tormented him into his grave. Certainly the absurd compromise
of half concealing and half revealing it to Gillies, a perfect stranger to
him and to the family, could have given him little comfort in his perplexity, and
was the occasion of infinite annoyance to the unfortunate monomaniac, upon
whose shoulders he, in dying, foisted it. He should either have carried it to his
grave or revealed it at once.”

“Do not judge harshly of the dead, Fergus,” said Neria, softly.

“Every man, dead or living, must consent to be judged by his life, and those
of Reginald Vaughn and his legatee seem to me to have been miserable failures,”
replied Fergus, coldly. “Vaughn, as I have said, showed a pitiable
weakness in neglecting to either keep or tell his secret; Gillies, an unpardonable
want of determination in neglecting to unravel it—”

“He could not, interposed Neria, “and his anxiety to conquer the impossibility
hurried him to his grave.”

“Impossibility is merely an arbitrary sign representing an unknown quantity,”
returned Fergus, with a slight smile. “I do not think it need be used in
this instance at all. I already have a theory upon the subject, and shall be
somewhat surprised if we do not, by its aid, spell out this wonderful secret before
we leave the room.

“We already know, through the key contained in your father's note book,
that the words Edaolu oe Oludluv may be translated Father of Heralds, and
it is easy to infer that this sentence, meaningless in itself, contains a reference
to something more important.”

“The oldest English herald of note is Guillim, and in fact I have seen him

[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]

referred to by this very title of Father of Heralds. Now, do you know, Neria,
of a copy of his work in this library?”

“No,” replied Neria, doubtfully, “I don't think I have ever heard of him.”

“Then let us look,” returned her cousin briefly, and immediately commenced
the search, while Neria forgot other occupation in watching his energetic movements
and the rare emotion betrayed by his glittering eyes and flushed cheek.
An hour passed thus, and an impatient frown was beginning to darken Fergus's
face, when from the depths of one of the sunken book-cases he drew a black,
moth-eaten quarto volume, evidently of great age. Opening at the title page,
the young man inhaled his breath with a quick sound of joyful surprise, exclaiming,
“The very thing! Old Guillim himself, venerable Father of Heralds.
Now let us see.”

He seated himself, the book upon his knee, and Neria looked anxiously over
his shoulder. With deliberate hand Fergus began to turn the leaves one by
one, searching for some loose paper laid between them, but the end of the volume
was reached in this tedious manner, with no result. Blank leaves at the beginning
and end there were none, and Fergus remained staring a moment at the
quaint colophon in a sort of angry disappointment at the result of his well-laid
calculations.

“Perhaps there is a false cover,” suggested Neria, quietly.

“Of course not. The outside is leather,” replied Fergus, somewhat impatiently
closing the book. “And yet,” continued he, examining it more minutely,
“I don't know but you may be right, Neria. This outside leather slips a little—
yes, I think it has been placed over the original cover and glued down upon
the inside. Let us see.”

A sharp penknife soon established the correctness of this theory, and after
a breathless moment of expectation Fergus drew from between the two covers a
sheet of thin paper, yellow with age and covered with the crabbed and peculiar
manuscript of Reginald Vaughn. It was written in cipher, but with the key before
them the cousins readily translated it to this effect:

“The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children,” says the Book whence
Christendom receives its law. The Book is to me no more than the earliest historical record
of mankind; but in this axiom is closed a great law of human nature. The destiny of
my house has pursued and overtaken me unawares, and I know not how to deal with it,
other than by leaving it to its own fulfilment.

Many years ago the weakness of my own and another's nature, crushed beneath my
father's iron prejudices, led to certain results; chief of which was the birth of an unfortunate
child, whose mother died in the same moment, whose father never will, never can
recognize him as his own. Nor yet has he been utterly abandoned.

It was a heavy bribe from me which induced the Scotchman Gillies to select from
among the inmates of the asylum, where I had placed him, the child whom he as little
knew to be my son, as the child of his own lost sister, and consequently his own nephew.
Could I have done better for the miserable little creature than to place him under guardianship
of his maternal uncle? As he grew to man's estate I found him amply able to
care for himself, and consequently dropped from my fingers the invisible thread which had
so far bound his life to mine. Now I am about to resume it, and under peculiar circumstances.

My earliest recollections are of the stormy scenes constantly occurring between my two
elder brothers, or between one or both of them, and my father, and I still remember the relief
I experienced when after a violent quarrel, in which all three had taken part, it was
announced that Alfred, the younger, had left home, as he professed, forever. Not that he
was to me the most disagreeable of my two brothers, for his storms and freaks of rage

[figure description] Page 134.[end figure description]

were as temporary as violent, while Egbert's temper was of the sullen and vindictive turn
far more dangerous as well as unpleasant to encounter.

I was, at this period, about twelve years old and, when soon after Alfred's departure,
Egbert married and settled at Bonniemeer, I became my father's companion and friend.
This was the happiest period of my own life; and, as I think, of his also. Our amusements,
our studies, our interests were identical; he treated me as an equal, even while he
adapted himself to my youth and inexperience, and, within certain limits, I was allowed
to treat him with a familiarity upon which his elder sons had never presumed.

Upon certain points, however, he was inflexible, and I, cowardly and secretive by nature,
never dreamed of opposing him openly, however I might secretly disobey him. The
most positive of these restrictions was one never distinctly expressed, but most distinctly
understood, debarring me, as I grew to manhood, from seeking the society of the other
sex. Lazarus Graves was our only attendant, and no woman's face ever brightened the
dim chambers of our home. My father never visited, even at Bonniemeer; and I should
as soon have ventured upon the grossest insult toward him, as to have noticed by more
than a distant salutation the pretty daughters and wives of the fishermen who occasionally
met us in our walks or rides. But strong passions and weak principles are the distinctive
brand of the Vaughn character from the earliest record, as the story of Marion Gillies
and her luckless boy would prove were it here set down, as it most certainly will not be.

Absorbed in my own secret and the precautions with which I surrounded it, I hardly
noticed my father's failing health and increasing gloom. He preferred to be much alone,
and when in my company fell often into profound reverie, from which he aroused himself
with a scrutinizing glance at me that more than once sent the guilty blood to my heart
with the conviction that I was discovered. Now, I do not doubt that my father was considering
the safety of intrusting me with a mystery which weighed even more heavily
upon his mind than the disease already leading him to the grave.

He died, and in his last moments struggled piteously to speak to me. I do not doubt
it was the secret, the shameful secret which even then tortured him with its demand for
an utterance denied to it by death. I could not guess at his Nemesis, nor did I care to
do so, for my own had overtaken me. Marion had died the day before.

I laid my father in the ground and returned to Cragness, the lonely, loveless man I
have remained ever since. The years since then are so nearly a blank that I pass them
over in silence until a day, now years ago, when, in some curious examination of the
carved woodwork above the fireplace of the library at Cragness, I hit accidentally upon a
secret spring, distant six inches in a right line from the spear-head of the knight in heraldic
device there blazoned. Within the crypt, disclosed by the movement of this spring,
I found the secret which, having driven my father to his grave, then turned back to fasten
upon me, and will, as I am certain, never release me until I lie beside him. How to dispose
of it is to me a question as unsettled as my own existence beyond the grave; and
after tormenting myself with it for years I have at last resolved to make this plain statement
of my own personal interest in the affair, to hide the statement as securely as possible,
and then to fly from this accursed house forever. Once abroad I shall die to the
world, soon, as I doubt not, to earth also, and in my legal death I shall bequeath this
place, the secret, and the knowledge of his own, his mother's, and his father's shame, to my
son, John Gillies. I shall place a blind clue in his hand at starting, and after that I leave
him to Destiny, and to the slow and terrible justice of Destiny, which will sooner or later
ordain that through the wrong done by me to him and his, the wrong done by another to
the proud name of Vaughn shall be exposed.

The manuscript closed thus abruptly; and, at the last word, Fergus and Neria,
raising their eyes to each other's face, withdrew them suddenly, while the
frown upon his brow, the burning blush on her's, already verified Reginald
Vaughn's bitter application of the curse ordaining that the shame and suffering
of the father's sin shall be surely visited upon the innocent children so long as
the world endures.

[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]

Then, without a word, Fergus folded the yellow sheets together, and hiding
them in a desk upon the table, went to the fireplace, and stood for a moment
minutely examining the carved scroll-work surrounding, like a frame, the dim
blazonry of the shield. From its midst the golden horseman looked sullenly
through his closed visor at his opponent; and, to Neria's strained fancy, the
lance in his grasp seemed quivering with the rage of an approaching onset.

“Six inches in a right line from the spear point,” muttered Fergus, measuring
the distance with quiet exactitude. “And this,” pursued he, after an instant,
as he pressed his finger upon a slight projection half hidden beneath a riblike
scroll—“this must be the spring.”

As he spoke, the spring yielded to the pressure, and, with noiseless motion,
the shield, with its baffled knight, its solemn crest and haughty motto, slid away,
revealing a small closet or crypt constructed in the thickness of the massive
chimney. From its interior Fergus silently took a folded parchment and an oldfashioned
pistol, primed and loaded.

“These are all,” said he, returning to the table, where Neria sat watching his
movements with dilated eyes and pallid cheeks. The panel, released from the
pressure of the spring, slid noiselessly back to its former position, and from its
face the effigy of the baffled and impotent guardian of old Egbert Vaughn's secret,
looked down with ghastly rage upon its audacious heirs.

Beneath the lock of the pistol was closed a strip of paper with these words
written upon it:

If one of my sons shall discover the secret place where is hidden this pistol and the
confession of his father's follies and crimes, I counsel him to lay the latter upon the fire,
and to discharge the first into his own head. So best shall he shield the memory of his
ancestors, and spare himself their inheritance.

These ominous words read Fergus; and withholding them from Neria's outstretched
hand, said, softly:

“No, my cousin. It was not meant for us, and will only shock you. Let us
look at the parchment.”

Laying the parchment upon the table, Fergus carefully laid open its stift
and yellow folds, and seated himself beside his cousin, that they might together
learn the mystery which for a century had hung over the fortunes of their house,
and for more than one of its members had mingled its dusky shadows with those
of the grave itself. A gleam of sunshine, piercing of a sudden the stormy sky,
flashed across Neria's pallid face and wildly lighted her sombre eyes, glanced
over the bent head and dusky face of her cousin, and touched, as with the finger
of Fate, the secret lying before them. Then, flickering upward, it lighted to a
flame the golden blazonry upon the wall, lingered yet a moment upon the closed
visor of the knight, and was gone, leaving a darkness and chill behind which
struck upon Neria's sensitive nerves like a breath from the tomb, whence, as it
seemed to her, they were about to pluck its sacred mysteries.

“O Fergus,” whispered she, pressing closer to his side, “let us leave it as
we find it. It is not good to meddle with the secrets of the dead. Put this paper
back, leave it for another to find, and let us begone. This place is killing
me.”

“Hush, child. Do not yield to womanish fancies now, when all is accomplished.
Give up the secret when it is within our grasp? What folly! Remember,
Neria, we are performing a solemn duty.”

He placed his arm about her as he spoke, and Neria sheltered within its fold
as quietly as on her mother's breast. So together they read:

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

When I, Egbert Vaughn, was but a boy, I loved my Cousin Maud, and she, in the
pride of wit and beauty, sneered at my passion. I left her with the silent oath that we
would yet change places, and that it should be my turn some day to triumph and hers to
plead.

Three years after, when I returned from my distant voyage, I forgot my oath in wonder
at her beauty and the sweetness of her welcome. I loved her more than I had ever
done, and she confessed to an equal passion. I pleaded for an immediate marriage, and
she and her cunning mother opposed me only so much as to excite my ardor and give
impetus to my wishes.

We married; and I waked from my fool's elysium to find myself the dupe of an infamous
plot.

My cousin, true to the violent passions, the rampant pride and easy principles of her
race, had chosen to secretly marry, during my absence, a fellow so low, so debased, so disgraceful
in every manner that even she dared not acknowledge him before the world, or
even to her own family. He was a sailor—a common foremast hand—and some weeks
after their marriage, had been induced, during a drunken frolic, to ship with some comrades
on board a whaler just ready for sea, and when he recovered his senses found himself
out of sight of land, with a three-years' voyage before him.

This was only a month previous to my return, and Maud Vaughn, remembering that
her marriage was without witness or proof, and under a feigned name, and, moreover,
already weary of her folly, at once resolved to forget the secret chain binding her to it,
secure that, even in case of her husband's return, he would never dare to claim her without
proof or even probability to adduce in support of a pretension which she should indignantly
deny.

In the first moment of my return she spread her lures, and baited her cunning snare
with the smiles and sighs, the blushes and half-uttered regrets for former misconduct,
which might have led a sounder judgment, a colder heart captive. She had not intended
to reveal the secret even when her object was effected; but, cunning and resolute though
she was, she had found in me her master, and I forced the confession from her lips, word
by word, without her finding the power to resist.

When she had done, she cast herself at my feet and implored me to shield her, to aid
her in ridding herself of her disgraceful connection, for the sake of the love I had borne
her, for the sake of the life she would lead in the future—for the sake of her unborn child.
I laughed in her face.

Then she stood up, her eyes all ablaze with the haughty fire of her blood, and bade me,
if I dared, to tarnish the name we both were proud to bear, to cast dishonor on the timehonored
race whence we both were sprung. When she was willing to lay a woman's nature
in the dust, to deliberately break the laws of God and man rather than live degraded
in her father's house, where the proofless marriage would never be credited, was I, she
said, was I—a man—to be less brave, less daring in shielding the honor of our house?

“O noble house!” sneered I, “as all its daughters are `sans reproche,' so should its
sons show themselves `sans peur.' I do not wonder, fair cousin, that you exhort me to be
brave.”

I left her without any promise as to the future; and, day by day, and week by week,
and month by month, I watched the gnawing terror consuming her heart as I dallied with
the secret, half-revealing it to some chance visitor, or pretending solemn confidences with
her own relatives, whom I encouraged to frequent the house. Many a time, as, after a
stern and warning look at her, I have beckoned her grey-haired father or her fiery brother
from the room, have I seen her eyes darken, her lips blanch with the anguish she could
not quite conceal. I never went farther. I did not wish to spoil my own sport; but
chose rather, at times, to quiet the sufferer by periods of cool kindness, or even indifference.
Then, when a feeling of security had nursed her to a little strength, a new blow
fell, waking in an instant all the old terrors.

Was this amusement a little cruel? Does it remind one of the Inquisition or its archetype
and patron down below? Perhaps; but remember that this woman had deliberately

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plotted to injure me as never man was injured yet and forgave the injury. I had loved
her with all the trust and strength of my ardent nature; and now I hated her; yes, hated
her with the rancor of a love poisoned at its spring, and I took my revenge after my own
fashion.

Her child was born. The old serpent, her mother, her only confidante, had not yet
discovered that I made a third in the pleasant little family secret, and so came to me the
day after the child's birth with her honeyed congratulations, and an inquiry if my son
should be christened by my own name.

“Give the boy his father's name by all means, my dear madam,” said I, looking her
in the eye until her cheeks grew white beneath her rouge, and her false mouth quivered
with rage and fear. But she mastered herself as only so well-drilled a votary of Satan
could have done, and, looking back my look, said, defiantly:

“Certainly; we will name him Egbert.”

“Ah! I do not wish to be inquisitive; but it is a curious coincidence if it is so,” said I.

She did not ask what I meant, but left the room and the house. They named the boy
Egbert—and I allowed it; for I had resolved to suffer him to grow to manhood before I
should reveal his true birth, and turn him, as an impostor, from my doors. Through the
son, too, lay a new road to the mother's heart, a new weapon in the life-long punishment I
had ordained for her.

It was about a year after this that a returning whaler brought tidings that the ship on
which my cousin's husband had embarked was lost at sea, with all hands on board.

This news I hastened to communicate to the widow, adding the suggestion that, as she
was now free, she might marry whom she would, and that I advised her to make the whole
story public at once, to withdraw from my protection, and make arrangements for a more
reputable life.

I could have pitied her then, if pity had not died out of my heart in the first year of
our quasi-marriage. She implored me not to cast her off, not to compel her to reveal her
early folly and subsequent crime. She confessed, with sobs and groans, her sins toward
me; but she protested that, through all my harshness, she had learned to love me, and
that now no new misery could equal the parting from me, and she ended by a passionate
petition that I should privately marry her again, and, accepting her for the future such as
she would make it, should forget the past and suffer her to forget it.

I have never, even among the beautiful daughters of my race, seen a woman so gorgeously
beautiful as Maud Vaughn; I have never heard so sweet a voice, never felt the
witchery of so seductive a manner, so tender or so winning an appeal. As I stood and
looked at her, kneeling at my feet, every nerve in her graceful body trembling with the
passion of the entreaty she had made, I felt the hard determination which had cased my
heart tremble and crumble beneath the magic of her presence. The old love rose up like
a mighty sea, and swept over all that had come between, burying it fathoms deep. Already
I stooped to gather her to my heart, when the door opened and the old mother
entered with the child in her arms; the child whom they had impudently named by my
name and imposed upon my bounty.

The sight sent back that mighty flood of love and forgiveness with as mighty an ebb.
I spurned the woman at my feet with such words as I never before had spoken to her. I
fiercely bade the wrinkled hypocrite at her side begone, and never darken my doors again.
I snatched the screaming child from her arms and would have tossed it through the window
to the roaring waves below; but its mother caught it from my arms, and stood before
me, defiant and beautiful as a Judith, braving me to my cruel worst.

I rushed from the house and wandered the whole night upon the beach. At daylight
my determination was reached. I would put all future relentings out of my own power,
destroy at a blow all hope for the future in the heart of my temptress, and in so doing
prepare a new torment for her in revenge for the weakness into which she had so nearly
surprised me.

I married another woman, a woman who supposed me already married, and who considered
the ceremony proposed by me as an idle farce to quiet her own conscience.

[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]

It was no innocent victim whom I thus deceived, but a woman as wily, as full of passion,
and as lax in moral strength as if she had been born twin sister of my Cousin Maud,
instead of merely being her dressing-maid.

I do not care to linger upon this part of my story, or to give it in detail. It is not
pleasant to remember the white face and steadfast eyes with which Maud listened to my
boast of what I had done, or to remember the year that followed. If when I saw the
only woman I had ever loved slowly dying of a broken heart and a bruised spirit, I found
my own heart as slowly crushed beneath the weight of that dying woman's curse, my own
spirit writhing and tortured beneath the burden of its almost accomplished revenge—if
these things were, I will not tell of them, I will not satisfy the Nemesis which has overtaken
me, by an admission that her work is accomplished. As I have lived, so will I die.

When I found that my real wife, still unconscious of her rights, was likely to become
a mother, I sent her away, and after a time followed with the lady whom all the world but
herself, myself and the wicked old mother supposed to be my wife. Returning to Cragness
after some months, we were accompanied by an infant, who was introduced to the
world as our second son, Alfred by name.

The lady's-maid had returned to England, where some years after she died, never having
suspected for a moment that her generous protector was in fact her lawful husband, or
that the brat whom she believed dead, was actually the legitimate heir of his father's name
and property.

In less than a year after this my Cousin Maud died. Of this occurrence, or of my own
feelings in connection with it, I will say nothing.

Years after I married again, my lady's-maid being as I supposed dead, although I have
since found reason to doubt whether the date of the marriage or the death should be
placed first. Nor did I particularly care, being in those days somewhat reckless, and more
than somewhat contemptuous of life, and law, and my fellow-creatures, especially of women.

My son Reginald's mother was a pretty and innocent girl whom I loved as I did my
dog, my horse, my tame doe. She loved me, too, as far as she was able, and respected
me fearfully. We were happy together, and I was sincerely sorry when she died in childbirth.

Egbert and Alfred Vaughn as they grew up displayed the honest antagonism to be expected
from their birth and antecedents. They hated each other cordially, and I hated
both, the one for his father's sake, the other for his mother's. On my youngest child I
centred such affections as I yet had to offer, and in my own heart recognized him as my
only true son, and heir of such property as I felt at liberty to bestow upon any one; the
estate of Bonniemeer, derived from my Cousin Maud, I had always destined to Egbert
her only child.

With these arrangements in my mind, it was no cause of regret to me when my son
Alfred announced his intention of leaving home forever, in consequence of the constant
quarrels between himself and Egbert, and the harshness and injustice which he complained
of having always received from me. I presented him with a thousand dollars, my
malediction, and a plain warning to let me see or hear of him no more. He sailed for Europe,
and was a few years after reported dead. I have since learned through a reliable but
secret source, that this report was circulated by himself in a childish desire to annoy me,
and to cut off all possible attempt at reconciliation on the part of his friends at home.

He little knew the utter indifference to his life or death which possessed my mind. I
accepted the contradiction without taking the trouble to make it public, and for many
years as completely set aside the memory of my son Alfred as I did that of the vicious
and disgusting woman his mother.

But now arrives the time when failing Nature warns me to be done with the concerns
of earth and resign myself to the great oblivion; and now I prepare the Parthian bolt,
which even from my grave shall reach and punish, through their descendants, those who
half a century ago stung and warped to boundless evil a nature formed by God for boundless
good. The son of Richard Grant and Maud his wife, born and bred as the eldest
son of the house of Vaughn, and heir to its wealth and honors, now in middle life, with all

[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]

the pride, the prejudice, the luxury of his assumed station fastened irrevocably upon him,
is now to learn, and to learn in face of the whole world, his own ignoble parentage, his
mother's weak and criminal subterfuge, and the relentless hate and vengeance that even
in his cradle prepared this grand finale to the drama in which he has played so important
although unconscious a part.

Before my death I shall confide this paper to my son Reginald Vaughn, with peremptory
orders to convey it at once to my solicitors, instructing them to take immediate steps
for depriving Egbert Grant of his wrongfully assumed name of Egbert Vaughn, and of
certifying the fact that Alfred Vaughn and his children are my only assuredly legitimate
descendants. The estate of Bonniemeer pertaining to Maud, wife of Richard Grant, in her
own right, devolves upon her son, but failing heirs of his body reverts to me, her nearest
living relation, and in case of such reversion I hereby express my intention of bequeathing
said property to my son Alfred and his descendants, and if sufficient time is allowed me,
shall draw up a formal instrument to that effect.

My son Reginald, rest content with this decision. You alone are, and have ever
been the son of my heart and my hopes. Whether the law would recognize your legitimacy
or not I cannot say, and the question need never be agitated, as I shall leave to you
by name the slender patrimony of Cragness, sufficient, if you are prudent, for all your
needs, especially as I have striven to imbue you with so much of my distrust and aversion
to womankind as shall keep you from the arch-folly called marriage. Over the property
now called Bonniemeer I do not consider myself to have any control, as I never was
legally married to its possessor. It descends, of right, to her son, Egbert Grant.

In concluding this confession, a model father would naturally deduce for the benefit
of his son, various moral conclusions and warnings. I prefer to leave them to your own
common-sense.

The characteristics of our race are almost unfailing in each generation. Their errors
only vary in ranging from folly to crime, according to the constitution of each member.
I have little hope that you will avoid them, but should you find it possible to do so, I
earnestly recommend the course. The old age of lawless youth is not a comfortable one,
even to a man sans peur.