sum upon second mortgage and the security of a trustful friend. But this

sum was dissipated, like the rest; for the Squire, being deeply wounded

by his wife's desertion, proved to the world his indifference about it

by plunging into still more reckless ways. He had none to succeed him;

for he vowed that the son of the adulteress--as he called her--should

never have Carne Castle; and his last mad act was to buy five-and-twenty

barrels of powder, wherewith to blow up his ancestral home. But ere he

could accomplish that stroke of business he stumbled and fell down the

old chapel steps, and was found the next morning by faithful Jeremiah,

as cold as the ivy which had caught his feet, and as dead as the stones

he would have sent to heaven.

No marvel that his son had no love for his memory, and little for the

land that gave him birth. In very early days this boy had shown that

his French blood was predominant. He would bite, and kick, and scratch,

instead of striking, as an English child does, and he never cared for

dogs or horses, neither worshipped he the gamekeeper. France was the

proper land for him, as his mother always said with a sweet proud smile,

and his father with a sneer, or a brief word now condemned. And France

was the land for him (as facts ordained) to be nourished, and taught,

and grown into tall manhood, and formed into the principles and habitude

and character which every nation stamps upon the nature of its members.

However, our strong point--like that of all others--is absolute freedom

from prejudice; and the few English people who met Caryl Carne were

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