explain it all to you. It was necessary that I should tell some one.
There seems to be no reason to suspect that the man has been killed."

"Oh, I hope not; I hope not that."

"He has been spirited away--out of the way of his creditors. For myself
I think that it has all been done with his father's connivance. Whether
his brother be in the secret or not I cannot tell, but I suspect he is.
There seems to be no doubt that Captain Scarborough himself has run so
overhead into debt as to make the payment of his creditors impossible by
anything short of the immediate surrender of the whole property. Some
month or two since they all thought that the squire was dying, and that
there would be nothing to do but to sell the property which would then
be Mountjoy's, and pay themselves. Against this the dying man has
rebelled, and has come, as it were, out of the grave to disinherit the
son who has already contrived to disinherit himself. It is all an
effort to save Tretton."

"But it is dishonest," said Florence.

"No doubt about it. Looking at it any way it is dishonest, Either the
inheritance must belong to Mountjoy still, or it could not have been his
when he was allowed to borrow money upon it."

"I cannot understand it. I thought it was entailed upon him. Of course
it is nothing to me. It never could have been anything."

"But now the creditors declare that they have been cheated, and assert
that Mountjoy is being kept out of the way to aid old Mr. Scarborough in
the fraud. I cannot but say that I think it is so. But why he should