Old Marmaduke had been long failing, and two years after this he had
taken to his bed, never to leave it again alive. And one day when the
son and heir was rolling and crowing on his grandfather's bed, and
Agnes was sewing at the window, and James was tying a fly by the
bedside, under the old man's directions; he drew the child towards him,
and beckoning Agnes from the window spoke thus:--

"My children, I shan't be long with you, and I must be the last of the
Buckleys that die at Clere. Nay, I mean it, James; listen carefully to
me: when I go, the house and park must go with me. We are very poor as
you well know, and you will be doing injustice to this boy if you hang
on here in this useless tumble-down old palace, without money enough to
keep up your position in the county. You are still young, and it
would be hard for you to break up old associations. It got too hard for
me lately, though at one time I meant to do it. The land and the house
are the worst investment you can have for your money, and if you sell,
a man like you may make money in many ways. Gordon the brewer is dying
to have the place, and he has more right to it than we have, for he has
ten acres round to our one. Let him have the estate and found a new
family; the people will miss us at first, God bless 'em, but they'll
soon get used to Gordon, for he's a kindly man, and a just, and I am
glad that we shall have so good a successor. Remember your family and
your ancestors, and for that reason don't hang on here, as I said
before, in the false position of an old county family without money,
like the Singletons of Hurst, living in a ruined hall, with a miserable
overcropped farm, a corner of the old deer park, under their drawing-room
window. No, my boy, I would sooner see you take a farm from my
lord, than that. And now I am tired with talking, and so leave me, but
after I am gone, remember what I have said."