training and education his son would receive from the hands of a mother
who had blasphemed his sect and openly proclaimed her infidelity. By
will, it is true, he might create a trust, and appoint guardians to his
child. But to have lived under the same roof with his wife,--nay, to
have carried her back to that roof when she had left it,--afforded tacit
evidence that whatever the disagreement between them, her conduct could
hardly have merited her exclusion from the privileges of a mother. The
guardianship might therefore avail little to frustrate Lucretia's
indirect contamination, if not her positive control. Besides, where
guardians are appointed, money must be left; and Braddell knew that at
his death his assets would be found insufficient for his debts. Who
would be guardian to a penniless infant? He resolved, therefore, to send
his child from his roof to some place where, if reared humbly, it might
at least be brought up in the right faith,--some place which might defy
the search and be beyond the perversion of the unbelieving mother. He
looked round, and discovered no instrument for his purpose that seemed so
ready as Walter Ardworth; for by this time he had thoroughly excited the
pity and touched the heart of that good-natured, easy man. His
representations of the misconduct of Lucretia were the more implicitly
believed by one who had always been secretly prepossessed against her;
who, admitted to household intimacy, was an eye-witness to her hard
indifference to her husband's sufferings; who saw in her very request not
to betray her gentle birth, the shame she felt in her election; who
regarded with indignation her unfeeling desertion of Braddell in his last
moments, and who, besides all this, had some private misfortunes of his
own which made him the more ready listener to themes on the faults of
women; and had already, by mutual confidences, opened the hearts of the
two ancient schoolfellows to each other's complaints and wrongs. The
only other confidant in the refuge selected for the child was a member of
the same community as Braddell, who kindly undertook to search for a