MY UNCLE'S WILL.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2265, 15 January 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

MY UNCLE'S WILL.

(In Thkke Chapters.) (Specially written for The Waikato Times by Tho O'Dell.) [All Rights Reserved.] CHAPTER lll.—(Continued.) As will have been gathered from our last Florence Burton and Lord Hurber Butler with his older brother had lived from childhood on terms of the greatest intimacy, more particularly Florence and Lord Hubert, as the latter had been at Harrow, and in his regiment the bosom friend of Charlie Council. Florence was therefore rather disappointed at the cold manner of her partner when he claimed her according to her request for the 2nd dance, a valse. It was therefore rather timidly that she suggested sitting the dance out as she felt rather tired and would like a chat with him. " Not here, Hurbert, take me to some cooler place" with feverish eagerness, but when they were in the cool conservatory she suddenly lost her tongue, and he did not seem inclined to help her till the pent up anxiety of the past twelve months, and more particularly of the last few days gave relief in a sudden burst of tears. Lord Hubert looked on in astonishment, and was cudgelling his brains for some means of administering consolation without committing himself to any approval of what he looked at as a coquette's wiles when she sobbed out, "Oh Herbert, I thought you were his friend, and now you won't say a word of him when I've not had a line from him for more than a year, and that horrid news in the "Sentinel" has broken my heart." To a girl who had been his playmate since he could remember, and whom he regarded aa bonne enmarade rather than an extremely pretty girl. Lord Hubert could be stern enough when he considered her a traitor to his friend, and he was about to say something sterner than his wont when he was melted at once by Florence laying a timid hand on his sleeve and sobbing out, " Herbert, I know I can trust you. He is wounded and dying, and he has quite forgotten me, but you have just come from him. Is he so bad as that horrible paper says ?" " Nonsense, you little silly, he will be all right soon. I brought him over with him, and left him with his old nurse at Lough-na-Gurr, where he insisted on going. It was a narrow squeak though, and here his voice grew sterner, "the knowledge of your faithleseness was the hardest thing he had to contend against." " I unfaithful, oh, Herbert!" and the genuine accents of indignation and wounded love convinced him. "Well, Flo dear, all will, I hope, be soon explained, but he added sotto voce, "it looked mighty like it. Hang it all, I know her from a baby, and I believe her. The surest way to make him well is to disabuse his mind of that." " Oh, Herbert, if he can't trust me, or if he has forgotten me, how can I remind him of—old times. I've humiliated myself enough to-night." "I know you, Flo, clear, better than you know yourself. To-night I came here with the bitterest thoughts against you, my old playmate. This is no place to give you the reasons, but you have convinced me. Don't you know that one line would convince Charlie, whose greatest danger is the agony of his disbelief in you, and who has a thousandfold more reasons to believe in you than I. Only one little line, Flo, dear, and I guarantee he'll be on his legs in a fortnight." * * * * • * ♦ Chas. Connell resumes his story.

From the maddening excitement of the rush on the Redan to a blissful unconsciousness of the world and woman's treachery seemed but a moment. I was dimly conscious of being laid on a hospital bed, and hearing a well-known voice say, " Keep up your pecker, Charlie, old man, you're safe for the majority and v.c. after this." I had but a hazy recollection of dragging our gallant old colonel as he fell out of the line of the fire, and of a couple of stinging pains as we both rolled under the shelter of the parapet. Then for days I felt the tortures of the last circle of Dante's Inferno. The physical pain 1 was utterly unconscious of, but Big Ben of Westminster seemed hammering my brain all the time to the tune of "Florence has forgotten you, forgotten you, forgotten you.' When I recovered consciousness Hubert was by my side. He, as I learned afterward, had been badly hit too, but brought me in here, and since had nursed me with a woman's tenderness. Such little hold had I physically, or from desire to lire, on life that it was only his constant care that made me at last, far from fit, but desperately anxious to return home, and take passage in his brother Ossory's yacht, for which he had telegraphed. A longing — an inexpressible longing—which looks now Providential, had seized me to see once more the wild, heather-clad hills around dark Lough-na-Gur, where my childhood had been passed during the lifetime of Aunt Mary, and where I had spent some months after, till my final quarrel with Uncle John. Hubert wanted me, right or wrong, to go home with him ; but, though I knew his mother would gladly take me in, invalid as I was, I also knew that Florence, once, alas, my Florence, as I thought, lived near, and I could not bear seeing her. My old nurse and fostermother lived in a fairly comfortable cottage on the Lough-na-Gur estate, and would, I knew, be proud to see me. Dropping a line therefore to old Annie, we started for Lough-na-Gur, for Herbert refused to leave me till he had seen me comfortably settled. At the village we were met by Annie, who was overjoyed to see her boy come back from the wars, shocked to see the weak state into which I had fallen, and proud that I should have come first to her to be nursed. "Ye must come up to the castle, alanna. I lives up there now to take care of it, as the new master niver comes nigh it. I can give ye yer uncle's room ; it's the only one aired and comfortable, as the agent sleeps in it when he comes, and he war here only last week." "But nurse, I can't go to the castle now. Mr Burton turned me out of his house the last time I saw him." " Don't be a fool, Charlie " ; go in, Herbert; "you are quite worn out travelling, and you must stop here for a few days at any rate until you are fit to be moved. There now, I have to go to see the mater, but as soon as I can get away, I'll come back and take you where you like." Reluctantly, I agreed; too exhausted to resist the combined attack of the allies, and after wounding all my poor old nurse's hospitable feelings by making- the merest pretence of a supper, found myself in my uncle's own room and bed. For a long time I could not sleep, partly I suppose from over fatigue, partly from a sorb of eerie sensation, fostered by my weak state of health, and by the ghostly effects of the moonlight in the enormous halffurnished room. There was little besides the toilet table, washstand, a dark mahogany press, a couple of chairs, and an old bureau, at which I remembered having often seen my uncle making up his accounts. Herbert had started immediately after supper, or I should have asked him to share my room. At last I fell into a troubled sleep, in which I seemed to live over again all my life as child and man at Lough-na-gur; other experiences were altogether absent, but the most trivial event "that had happened in the old house recurred clearly now to my mental vision. Yet all this time, among the many friends, I saw most distinctly, I never saw my uncle till towards the end when he appeared just for a moment looking sadder, and at the same time gentler than usual. I was by this time recovering eoino dim half-consciousness

of being in bed, and methought as he approached the bed his face brightened as he recognised me, and I awoke with his words still in my ears " Look for the will, Charlie, in the secend drawer of the old bureau." I felt so positive of his presence that I looked eagerly around for him but saw nothing. Shortly after the nurse came up with my breakfast, but, though I felt sure of her belief and sympathy, I was secretly ashamed of my half-credulity and tried to dismiss the subject from my mind. A dilapidated old phaeton was found in the'eoachjiouse, and borrowing a horse I spent the morning among the hills, whose pure air already seemed to revive me, at least I now first had a longing to live. That night I slept nndisturbed, but the next my dream was repeated with the addition that my uncle looked angrily at me as he repeated his warning. Still I was loth to believe; though an Irishman, and with countless ghost storiee in the family I had always laughed at them as impossible, so I said to myself that I wou'd wait and it would be time enough to believe the ghost if he came tho third time. And so he did on the fifth night of my stay, and left me also a token of his presence, for when Hubert arrived early the next morning and felt inclined to laugh at my story, I was able to show him a scar on my right wrist as of a burn, which, by the way, I still bear. "By Jove, the old boy must be in hot quarters, but I h&ve good news for you, old man, and as luck never rains but it pours, perhaps this good news is true too." " You have seen Florence ?" " Yes, old man, and she had been and still is true to you, though she never got that letter of yours, and feared you had forgotten her. They want her to marry Ossory, but as soon as he heard of it he refused to interfere with your claims. Now no transports, old man, you are strong enough for them yet. I mean to hunt out the secret of that lo3t will, but we must go to work regularly. Who was your uncle's solicitor ?" "A Mr Thorp, of George - street, Limerick." "All right, I'll have him out this evening." Sure enough that evening the solicitor appeared on the scene and greeted me cordially. Though a lawyer yet he listened with out any signs of incredulity to my storjr. " I myself drew up a will in your favour not six months before he died but though we searched everywhere we could not find it. We had better put off examining the" bureau till morning as you look tired. Charley, and it is better to have another witness.' . Next morning, Mr Thorp assisted by a neighbouring , magistrate examined the bureau which I may mention, though locked, had the key in it : half an hour's search resulted in nothing till Herbert gave it a vicious kick as they were going to give it up and Mr Thorp excitedly commenced tugging at the back where a panel seemed just stirred an eighth of an inch. "I congratulate you Charley" cried he, triumphantly waving , an oblong piece of parchment." The will left me everything except £20,000 which however she forfeited if she refused me. Need I continue ?