thousand eight hundred pounds. When these facts were communicated to the
two brothers in the presence of a lawyer, Morris Finsbury threatened
his uncle with all the terrors of the law, and was only prevented from
taking extreme steps by the advice of the professional man. 'You cannot
get blood from a stone,' observed the lawyer.

And Morris saw the point and came to terms with his uncle. On the one
side, Joseph gave up all that he possessed, and assigned to his
nephew his contingent interest in the tontine, already quite a hopeful
speculation. On the other, Morris agreed to harbour his uncle and Miss
Hazeltine (who had come to grief with the rest), and to pay to each
of them one pound a month as pocket-money. The allowance was amply
sufficient for the old man; it scarce appears how Miss Hazeltine
contrived to dress upon it; but she did, and, what is more, she never
complained. She was, indeed, sincerely attached to her incompetent
guardian. He had never been unkind; his age spoke for him loudly; there
was something appealing in his whole-souled quest of knowledge and
innocent delight in the smallest mark of admiration; and, though the
lawyer had warned her she was being sacrificed, Julia had refused to add
to the perplexities of Uncle Joseph.

In a large, dreary house in John Street, Bloomsbury, these four dwelt
together; a family in appearance, in reality a financial association.
Julia and Uncle Joseph were, of course, slaves; John, a gentle man with
a taste for the banjo, the music-hall, the Gaiety bar, and the sporting
papers, must have been anywhere a secondary figure; and the cares
and delights of empire devolved entirely upon Morris. That these are
inextricably intermixed is one of the commonplaces with which the bland
essayist consoles the incompetent and the obscure, but in the case of
Morris the bitter must have largely outweighed the sweet. He grudged no