"ROBERT BLANCHFLOWER."

"Good heavens!" was all Winnington could find to say, as he put down
the letter.

Then, becoming aware, as the verandah filled after breakfast, that he
was in a very public place, he hastily rose, thrust the large
solicitor's envelope, with its bulky enclosures into his coat pocket,
and proceeded to gather up the rest of his post. As he did so, he
suddenly perceived a black-edged letter, addressed in a remarkably
clear handwriting, with the intertwined initials D. B. in the corner.

A fit of silent laughter, due to his utter bewilderment, shook him. He
put the letter with all its fellows into another pocket and hurried
away into the solitude of the woods. It was some time before he had
succeeded in leaving all the tourists' paths and seats behind. At last
in a green space of bilberry and mossy rock, with the pines behind him,
and the chain of the Dolomites, sun-bathed, in front, he opened and
read his "ward's" first letter to him.

"DEAR MR. WINNINGTON,--I understood--though very imperfectly--from my
father, before he died, that he had appointed you my guardian and
trustee till I should reach the age of twenty-five, and he explained to
me so far as he could his reason for such a step. And now I have of
course read the will, and the solicitors have explained to me clearly
what it all means.

"You will admit I think that I am placed in a very hard position. If my
poor father had not been so ill, I should certainly have tried to argue
with him, and to prevent his doing anything so unnecessary and unjust