my will. Come back to Fairburn, and I will behave towards you as though you had not acted in your late undutiful manner. Delay to do so, and be sure that you will still have to return, but under very different circumstances. Marmaduke Heath, you should know me well by this time. When I say 'Come,' it is bad for the person to whom I speak to reply, 'I will not come.' I give you twenty-four hours to arrive here after the receipt of this letter; when these have elapsed without my seeing you, I shall consider your absence to be equivalent to a contumacious refusal. Then war will begin between us; and the strife will be unequal, Nephew Marmaduke; although you had fifty men at your back like lawyer Clint and this man Gerard, they could not keep you from my arm. It will reach you wheresoever you are, at the time you least suspect it, and from the quarter to which you have least looked. However well it may seem to be with you, it will not be well. When you think yourself safest, you will be most in danger. There is indeed but one place of safety for you: come you home.

 "MASSINGBERD HEATH." 

"MASSINGBERD HEATH."

The wily baronet had fooled me, and doubtless, when I rose to light the taper, had substituted the above letter for that which he had persuaded me to enclose to his unhappy nephew.

CHAPTER III.

BEFORE THE BLOW.

As yet in ignorance of the mischief which I had unwittingly done to my dearest friend, I could not but wonder why I received no news from Harley Street. I had confessed to Mr. Long what Sir Massingberd had persuaded me to do, and although he had thought me wrong to have acted without consulting him in the matter, he anticipated no evil consequences. He rather sought to laugh me out of my own forebodings and presentiments. Still there was this somewhat suspicious corroboration of them, that the newborn courtesies of our formidable neighbour had suddenly ceased, as though the end for which they had been used was already attained. The baronet's manner towards us was as surly as ever, and even a trifle more so, as if to recompense himself for his previous constrained politeness. To myself, his manner was precisely that of a man who does not attempt to conceal his contempt for one whom he has duped. Since Marmaduke's departure, there had gone forth various decrees, injunctions, and what not, from the Court of Chancery, obtained doubtless through Mr. Clint, on behalf of the heir-presumptive, against certain practices of Sir Massingberd connected with the 

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