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"Cunning old fox," thought Dick; "hiding my money, is he?"

Then he crouched down in the dark passage, and waited.

The situation presently struck him as being intensely comic. Here was the old man counting his money in the bed-room, while Lafleur was probably getting up the ladder. Instead of sleeping off a dose of morphia, Mr. Mortiboy was in a lively state of wakefulness. Instead of robbing the father, Lafleur would be robbing him. He chuckled at the thought, leaning against. the wall, till the floor shook.

In five minutes or so, he saw a black form against the window.

"There he is," thought Dick. The real fun was about to begin. Lafleur opened the window noiselessly, and stepped into the passage. He moved with silent steps, feeling his way till he came to the old man's door. Then he looked in, and stood still, irresolute for the light was streaming out, and Mr. Mortiboy was not even in bed.

Dick crept along the passage, and laid a heavy hand upon his shoulder. Lafleur started, but he knew the pressure of that hand: it could only be Dick.

They peeped together through the halfopened door. Mr. Mortiboy had opened the doors of his great press, and brought out all the contents. They were scattered on the table. Gold and silver plate, forks, spoons, cups, épergnes-all lay piled in a heap. In the centre a great pile of sovereigns, bright and new-looking. The old man stood over them with outstretched arms, as if to confer his blessing. Then he laid his cheek fondly on the gold. Then he dabbled his hands in it, took it up, and dropped the coins through his fingers. Then he polished a gold cup with his sleeve, and murmured

"Dick knows nothing of this - Dick knows nothing of this."

And then Dick gently led Lafleur away, and brought him silently to the kitchen, where, with both doors shut, he sat down, and laughed till his sides ached.

"Pardon me," said Lafleur, whose face was white with rage and disappointment, "I don't see the joke. Pray, was this designed as a special amusement for me?" "I must laugh," cried Dick. finest thing I ever came across." And he laughed again till the tears ran down his cheeks.

"It's the

Lafleur sat down doggedly and waited. "And now," said Dick at last, "let us talk. It's all right, partner, and you can have your five thousand whenever you like." "Now?" asked Lafleur.

"Well, not now. In a few days. Hang it, man!-you can't get a big lump like that paid down at a moment's warning." "Tell me all about it."

Dick told him in as few words as possible.
"It is all yours, Dick?"
"All mine."

"You are rich at last. Good." He was considering how he might get his share of the plunder. "Let me have a few hundreds to-night, Dick. I lost a lot yesterday, and promised to pay to-morrow evening."

"How can I? To-morrow I can give you five hundred from the bank, if you like."

"Too late. If it is all yours, the money upstairs is yours. Let me have some of that."

Dick hesitated. Void of affection as he was to his father, he yet felt a touch of compunction at undeceiving him so soon.

"I meant to have an explanation in a few days. But if you cannot wait—"

"I really cannot, my dearest Richard. It is life and death to me. I must start from this respectable place to-night with money in my pocket."

"Then we must have our row to-night. It seems hard that the old man should not have a single night's rest in his delusion. However, it can't be helped. Give me your duplicate keys."

He put on his boots, took a candle, and went upstairs to his father's room. Mr. Mortiboy was in bed by this time and asleep, for the explanation of things had taken nearly an hour. Dick opened the press, took out a couple of bags, such as those used at the bank, containing a hundred pounds each, and threw them with a crash upon the table. The noise woke his father. He started up with a shriek. "Thieves!-murder!-Dick!-Dick!

thieves!-Dick!"

"It is Dick. Don't be alarmed, father. I am helping myself to a little of my own property. That is all."

The old man gasped, but could not speak. He thought it was another of the dreadful dreams which disturbed his night's rest.

Dick sat on the edge of his bed, with the candlestick in his hand, and looked him in

the face, pulling his beard meditatively, as he always did when he was going to say a grave thing.

"It is quite as well, father, that we should understand one another. All your property is now mine. I can do what I like with itconsequently, what I like with you. I shall not be hard on you. What you gave me when I was nineteen, I will give you now that you are getting on towards seventy. An old man does not want so much as a boy, so the bargain is a good one for you. A pound a-week shall be paid to you regularly, with your board and lodging, and as much drink as you like to put away. The pound begins to-morrow."

His father put his hand to his forehead, and looked at him curiously. He still half thought it was a nightmare.

"It is not your fault that your estimate of my character was not quite correct, is it? You see, you never gave yourself any trouble to find out what I was like as a young man. That is an excuse for you, and accounts for your being so easily taken in by my stories. I wanted your money, which was natural enough. I knew very well that if I came snivelling home like a beggar, a beggar I should remain. So I came home like a rich man; flourished the little money I had in your face; bragged about my estates, and my mines, and all the rest of it. Estates and mines were all lies. I've got nothing. I never had anything. I've lived by gambling and my wits. This very night, if it were not for the deed of gift you have made, I should have robbed you, and you would never have found out who did it."

The old man's face was ghastly. Beads of perspiration stood upon his forehead. His eyes stared fixedly at his son, but he made no sign.

"You see, my dodge succeeded. Dodges generally do, if one has the pluck and coolness to carry them through. Now I'm worth half a million of money. No more screwing hard-earned coins out of poor people. No more drudging and grinding for the firm of Mortiboy. The property, sir, shall be spent, used, made the most of-for my own enjoyment."

Still his father neither moved nor spoke. "I've lived, since you kicked me out into the world, as I could-as a gambler lives. You have told me, in the last few days, how you have lived. Father, my life has not been so bad as yours. I've held my own among

lawless men, and fought for my own hand, in my own defence. No one curses the name of Roaring Dick-not even the men whose money I have taken from their pockets; for they would only have done as much by me if they could. But you? In every street, in every house in this town, yours will be a memory of hatred. I never robbed a poor man. You have spent your life in robbing poor men. There, I've had my say, and shall never say it again. As for these things"-kicking the door of the press-"they will be all sold. To-night, I only want the money. Go to sleep now; and thank Heaven that you have got a son who will take care of your latter days."

He took his bags, and left the room. His father threw out his arms after him in a gesture of wild despair, and then fell heavily back, without a sigh or a groan.

Lafleur returned to London by the night train, with the money; and Dick went quietly to bed, where he slept like a child.

In the morning, Mr. Mortiboy did not. appear at breakfast. Dick sent Hester up. His door was wide open. The press was open, the gold and silver plate lying about on the floor, as Dick had left it. But the late owner of all was lying motionless on the bed. He was stricken with paralysis. His senses were gone; and save for his breathing, you would have called him dead. Dick, with great thoughtfulness, had him removed downstairs to his old study, where he installed Hester as nurse and attendant, telling her to get another woman for the house. He had all the doctors in the place to attend his father, and expressed, with dry eyes, much sorrow at the hopeless character of the malady. Market Basing was greatly exercised in spirit at the event, which it considered as a "judgment," though no special reason was alleged for the visitation. And all men began to praise Dick's filial piety, and to congratulate Mr. Mortiboy, or rather his memory, on having a son-tali ingenio præditum-gifted with such a remarkable sweetness of disposition, and so singular an affection for his father.

THOMAS SUTTON.

THE quiet home of the Carthusian brothers attracts but little notice from the busy outside world. Sequestered almost in the heart of the great, dingy city, the Charterhouse is one of the last faint relics of the

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vast old monastic system to which that conscientious monarch, "bluff King Hal," with the aid and counsel of his trusty and obedient advisers, gave the death-blow. Not that the brothers of the Charterhouse of this degenerate nineteenth century are in the remotest degree like the Carthusian -monks of the holy days of yore. Eighty "decayed gentlemen," wearing away in undisturbed peace their latter days within the quaint precincts of the old retreat, with its cloisters, quadrangles, and fresh green gardens, only a stone's throw from the life and bustle of Smithfield and the Barbican, are very tame descendants of the twenty-four pious monks who, in the year of grace 1371, first entered into possession of the newly established monastery, and in the following year received within their walls the body of the founder, Sir Walter de Manny, one of the bravest soldiers in the armies of Edward the Third and the Black Prince.

True, our modern Carthusians - good, worthy past citizens though they be-still, when they assemble to dine en masse in the great hall every day at three o'clock, wear a long, plain black cloak-the last departing vestige of former monastic distinction.

And here the parallel may be said to end -save, perhaps, the additional fact that the modern Carthusian brothers are, like their predecessors of old, celibates, or at least widowers. Nor does it seem to have been the intention of "good Thomas Sutton," the founder of the Charterhouse, whose life-size portrait looks down benignly upon the daily gathering of the latest heirs of his bounty, that the parallel should be stronger. Thomas Sutton belonged to the new days of Protestant supremacy; and the last of the old Carthusian monks had received a terrible lesson for their obduracy in refusing to renounce the Pope, and acknowledge Henry the Eighth as the head of the English Church.

On the 4th of May, 1535, for instance, Prior Houghton, with two other Carthusian priors, and a monk of Sion House, having been convicted of speaking against the King and his supremacy, were hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn-one of the quarters of Houghton being placed over the gate of the Charterhouse as a warning to all other obstreperous members of the order.

The royal anger not, seemingly, having been satisfied by this summary vengeance, in little more than a month after Humphrey Middlemore, Houghton's companion

in prison, together with William Exmew and Sebastian Nudigate, three of the chief monks of the convent, shared a similar fate, their execution being attended with still more barbarous cruelties. These rough measures were of course only preliminaries to confiscation. This took place on the 10th of June, 1537, its annual revenues at the time amounting to £642 4s. 6d. A few years after, in 1542, we find the old monastery bestowed upon John Brydges and Thomas Hales, grooms of the king's hales and tents, for their joint lives, in consideration of the safe keeping of the King's tents and pavilions.

The Charterhouse passed successively into other hands. The Duke of Northumberland bought it of Sir Edward North, who then held it in possession. But the new owner being beheaded not long after, it again reverted to the Crown, and was restored to its former possessor, now created Lord North.

Queen Elizabeth, on her accession to the throne, was conducted in great state from Hatfield to the Charterhouse. And again, in 1561, her Majesty paid Lord North a visit at the Charterhouse.

In Burleigh's Diary, reference is made to this visit. "The Queen supped at my house in Strand (Savoy) before it was finished, and she came by the fields from Christ Church. Great cheer was made till midnight, when she rode back to the Charterhouse, where she lay that night." The Charterhouse, as may be seen, had become nothing more nor less than a nobleman's mansion; but even now more than one dark page in the history of those troubled times was connected with the famous old pile. The Duke of Norfolk was the next purchaser of the place, and he rebuilt a great portion of it at much expense. His plot for marrying Mary, Queen of Scots, coming to the knowledge of Elizabeth, he was committed to the Tower. There he remained for twelve months; but on the appearance of the plague he was allowed to return to his own residence, under the "gentle confinement" of Sir Henry Nevil. most immediately he renewed his intrigues with Mary. A secret correspondence was discovered, and he was again committed to the Tower, in September, 1571. The key to some letters written in cypher was found concealed under the tiles of the Charterhouse roof; and these, having been deciphered by his secretary, Hickford, led to the Duke's conviction upon various charges of treason, and his subsequent execution. Charterhouse

Al

beth was the great test and crucible of all our best sterling English qualities; and in this epoch Thomas Sutton took his own simple, worthy part.

yet remained, however, in the hands of the Howards, the Queen having restored the forfeited estates to the descendants of the Duke. And the last great pageant observed at the Charterhouse, before it once more re- Of Sutton's early life, nothing very authensumed a new character, was on the acces- tic is known. He was born in 1532 at Knaith, sion of James the First. In May, 1603, the in Lincolnshire; received his education at King was conducted in grand procession Eton and Cambridge, and afterwards enfrom Stamford-hill by the lord mayor, alder-tered himself a student of Lincoln's Inn. men, and five hundred of the chief citizens on horseback, wearing gold chains, on a visit of respect to Lord Thomas Howard at the Charterhouse. Here the King kept his Court four days, made upwards of eighty knights, and created his entertainer Earl of Suffolk.

Eight years afterwards, the splendid old mansion, with its gardens and grounds, was purchased by Thomas Sutton, Esq., for £13,000, for the establishment of the hospital and school of Charterhouse; and as such up to the present time it has remained, although there are rumours afloat that a removal of the whole institution to more suburban latitudes is on the tapis. The school is already on the move, and the brothers will undoubtedly not be long in leaving the old "House," with which so many ancient memories are vividly associated. But the subject of our present sketch is rather Thomas Sutton himself than the establishment which he so munificently.endowed.

A worthy man, in the heartiest sense of the word, was brave Thomas Sutton;-a man, like many other benefactors of his fellow-men, of whom but too little is known, and that little almost forgotten. But what remains of his history is worth repeating. Men like Thomas Sutton, the founder of the Charterhouse; Alleyn, the actor, first master and pensioner, humble as the rest of his own college of God's Gift at Dulwich; and other noble-hearted, God-fearing doers of good for charity's sake of a like sort, were the Peabodys of their own days; and, for the benefit and example of the generations that come after them, deserve to be not altogether forgotten in the memories of individual worth.

Thomas Sutton belonged to a period of our history when the true nerve and character of this nation was developed to an extent never before equalled, and perhaps scarcely since. By sea and by land, in commerce, in letters, in statesmanship-in every field, in fact, in which individual courage and talent could assert themselves-the reign of Eliza

But the law was not to his taste, and he went on a tour through Holland, Spain, and Italy.

While he was away on his travels, his father, a respectable gentleman of Lincoln, of large property, died. Sutton, now thirty years of age, well-travelled, and a good linguist, became secretary to the Earl of Warwick, and occasionally to his brother, the Earl of Leicester.

Warwick was then Master-General of the Ordnance, and from him Sutton received the appointment of Master of the Ordnance at Berwick. The rebellion in the North had just been raised by the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, and in its suppression Sutton performed his own part so well that, in February, 1569, he obtained a patent for the office of Master-General of the Ordnance in the North for life.

Afterwards, in the campaign organized to reduce the fortresses which still held out for Mary, Queen of Scots, Thomas Sutton commanded one of the batteries at the siege and surrender of Edinburgh Castle.

On these se

Just about this time, one of those fortunate accidents which sometimes happen in men's lives, and lead them on to fortune, occurred to the young soldier. He managed to obtain, first from the Bishop of Durham and afterwards from the Crown, a lease of the manors of Gateshead and Wickham, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. veral rich veins of coal were discovered, which Sutton worked with such success, that, on his coming up to London in 1580, he is said to have brought with him "two horseloads of money, and was reputed worth £50,000." And, according to Herne, in his "Domus Carthusiana," the fame of his wealth was so great that it was reported "his purse was fuller than Queen Elizabeth's exchequer."

But the fortunate Thomas Sutton seems to have been a thoroughly practical speculative man of business; and, in the hands of such a man, riches only pile themselves up all the faster. At the discreet age of fifty,

Sutton married Mrs. Elizabeth Dudley, widow of a Mr. John Dudley, a near relation of the Earl of Warwick. By his marriage he added still more largely to his fortune. He now bought a large house near Broken Wharf, near Queenhithe, and commenced business as a merchant. The extent of his success may be estimated from the fact that, even in those days, he had no less than thirty agents abroad. He became also one of the chief contractors for victualling the navy.

But, though one of the most successful merchant-traders of his time, Thomas Sutton was a staunch patriot; and he lent the influence of his immense wealth freely to aid the Government in preparing against our enemies abroad. We need only note one very important instance of this.

When Walsingham was informed of the vast preparations which were being made by Philip III. to equip the Spanish Armada, he checked the operations of the enemy a whole year by purchasing up, through the aid of our merchants, the bills of the Bank of Genoa, and drawing the money out of it at the very moment when his Spanish Majesty had drawn bills upon the bank, to enable him to obtain the supplies for sending his fleet to sea.

The Spanish bills were in consequence returned unpaid, and Philip was forced to await the arrival of his Plate fleet before he could supply his navy.

This astute manoeuvre on the part of Sir Francis Walsingham undoubtedly went far to save England. It gave the Government ample time to prepare, and enabled it to make that determined attack on the invading fleet which was so victoriously followed up. But it must be remembered, also, that without large funds at his disposal wherewith to work-and those, too, from private sources, for the national exchequer was at a very low ebb-the English statesman would have been unable to make such a politic stroke.

Tradition has given the credit of buying up the Bank of Genoa bills to Sir Thomas Gresham; but this is undoubtedly a mistake. Sir Thomas died nine years before the invasion of the Armada. Thomas Sutton, on the other hand, was the richest merchant of his time; and at the Charterhouse, the honour of rendering such an invaluable assistance in the hour of national peril is always attributed to the founder.

Another incident is illustrative of Sutton's interest in national affairs. At the time of the Armada, he was appointed Commissioner of Prizes under Lord Charles Howard, Lord High Admiral, when he completely equipped a ship at his own expense, called it by his own name, and sent it to join the fleet under Drake. But the patriotic investment also turned out profitable: the good barque Sutton captured a Spanish vessel, with a cargo of £20,000.

We now come to the change in the life of the great merchant prince. "And now," says one of his old biographers, "advancing in years, being himself without issue, and past all hopes of children by Mrs. Sutton, he grew sick of the great multiplicity of his affairs, and began seriously to reflect that he walked in a vain shadow, and disquieted himself in vain while he heaped up riches, and could not tell who should gather them; and therefore, contracting his great dealings, he brought them into so narrow a compass as permitted him to quit London, and to reside at one or other of his country seats-for he had purchased several good estates."

Thomas Sutton accordingly retired into private life. Here he lived, as he had always done, in the greatest magnificence; but, with his wife, ever engaged in acts of mercy and charity. Here is a letter from Mrs. Sutton to her husband, which is delightful as it is quaint:

"GOOD MR. SUTTON-I send you here enclosed a letter from John Hutton, which came by the carrier; and all is well at Balsham, I thank God. And here is another letter, which I opened before I looked upon the superscription, which came by another. It toucheth a widow, wherefore I need not write to you in her behalf, for I know you have great care of the poor for God's cause, though she were a mere stranger. I send you here a note for Lenten stores. If you intend to stay here this Lent, you must increase it for Haberdeen and Lynge. And so, praying God to bless us both, I commit you to his keeping.-Your loving, obedient wife, "ELIZ. SUTTON.

"Twenty great eles; four salmons, good and great; a barrel of Lowborne herrings, of the bigger boyle; forty stock-fish, good and ready beaten; a cade of sprats and a cade of red herrings, them that be good; six pounds of figs; and three pounds of Jordan almonds."

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