much as his right to give the result of his life's work to the first beggar
he might chance to meet. It would have made him still happier if he could
have had the power of destroying Brackenhill utterly, of wiping it off the
face of the earth, in case he could not find an heir who pleased him, for
it troubled him to think that some man _must_ have the land after him,
whether he wished it or not.

Godfrey Hammond had declared that no one could conceive the exquisite
torments Mr. Thorne would endure if he owned an estate with a magnificent
ruin on it, some unique and priceless relic of bygone days. "He should be
able to see it from his window," said Hammond, "and it should be his, as
far as law could make it, while he should be continually conscious that in
the eyes of all cultivated men he was merely its guardian. People should
write to the newspapers asserting boldly that the public had a right of
free access to it, and old gentlemen with antiquarian tastes should find a
little gap in a fence, and pen indignant appeals to the editor demanding to
be immediately informed whether a monument of national, nay, of world-wide
interest, ought not, for the sake of the public, to be more carefully
protected from injury. Local archæological societies should come and read
papers in it. Clergymen, wishing to combine a little instruction with the
pleasures of a school-feast, should arrive with van-loads of cheering boys
and girls, a troop of ardent teachers, many calico flags and a brass band.
Artists, keen-eyed and picturesque, each with his good-humored air of
possessing the place so much more truly than any mere country gentleman
ever could, should come to gaze and sketch. Meanwhile, Thorne should remark
about twice a week that of course he could pull the whole thing down if he
liked; to which every one should smile assent, recognizing an evident but
utterly unimportant fact. And then," said Hammond solemnly, "when all the
archæologists were eating and drinking, enjoying their own theories and
picking holes in their neighbors' discoveries, the bolt should fall in the