Now, old Sir George Rodney, grandfather of the present baronet, had two sons, Geoffrey and George. Now, Geoffrey he loved, but George he hated. And so great by years did this grow that after a bit he sought how he should leave the property away from his -born, who was George, and leave it to Geoffrey, the younger,—which was hardly fair; for "what," says Aristotle, "is justice?—to give every man his own." And surely George, being the elder, had first claim. The having been broken during the last generation, he found this easy to accomplish; and so after many days he made a will, by which the younger son inherited all, to the of the elder.  
But before this, when things had gone too far between father and son, and harsh words never to be forgotten on either side had been uttered, George, unable to bear longer the ignominy of his position (being of a wild and yet withal generous disposition), left his home, to seek another and happier one in foreign lands.
 
Some said he had gone to India, others to Van Diemen's Land, but in truth none knew, or cared to know, save Elspeth, the old nurse, who had tended him and his father before him, and who in her heart nourished for him an undying affection.
 
There were those who said she clung to him because of his wonderful to the picture of his grandfather in the south gallery, Sir Launcelot by name, who in choicest and most elaborate queue, smiled gayly down upon the passers-by.
 
For this master of the Towers (so the story ran) Elspeth, in her younger days, had borne a love too deep for words, when she herself was soft and rosy-cheeked, with a heart as tender and romantic as her eyes were blue, and when her lips, were for all the world like "cherries ripe."
 
But this, it may be, was all village , and was never borne out by anything. And Elspeth had married the gardener's son, and Sir Launcelot had married an earl's daughter; and when the first baby was born at the "big house," Elspeth came to the Towers and nursed him as she would have nursed her own little bairn, but that Death, "dear, beauteous Death, the jewel of the just, shining nowhere but in the dark," sought and claimed her own little one two days after its birth.
 
After that she had never again left the family, serving it faithfully while strength stayed with her, knowing all its secrets and all its old legends, and many things, it may be, that the child she nursed at her never knew.
 
For him—strange as it may seem—she had ever but little love. But when he married, and George, the eldest boy, was given into her arms, and as he grew and developed and showed himself day by day to be the very prototype of his grandsire, she "took to him," as the servants said, and clung to him—and afterwards to his memory—until her dying day.
 
When the dark, wayward, handsome young man went away, her heart went with him, and she alone perhaps knew anything of him after his departure. To his father his absence was a relief; he did not disguise it; and to his brother (who had married, and had then three children, and had of late years grown from him) the loss was not great. Nor did the young madam,—as she was called,—the mother of our present friends, lose any opportunity of fostering and keeping alive the ill will and that existed for him in his father's heart.
 
So the , being well watered, grew and flourished, and at last, as I said, the old man made a will one night, in the presence of the gardener and his nephew, who witnessed it, leaving all he possessed—save the title and some outside property, which he did not possess—to his younger son. And, having made this will, he went to his bed, and in the cold night, all alone, he died there, and was found in the morning stiff and , with the gay spring sunshine pouring in upon him, while the birds sang without as though to mock death's power, and the flowers broke slowly into life.
 
But when they came to look for the will, lo! it was nowhere to be found. Each drawer and desk and cabinet ............