Advice, money, horses, clothes, guns--anything and everything which might, could, or would redound to the glory of the Rutters had been his for the asking, but the touch of a warm hand, the thrill in the voice when he had done something to please and had waited for an acknowledgment--that had never come his way.

Nothing of this kind was needed between men, his father would say to Harry's mother--and his son was a man now.

Had their child been a daughter, it would have been quite another thing, but a son was to be handled differently--especially an only son who was sole heir to one's entire estate.
And yet it must not be thought that the outcast spent his time in sheer idleness.

St.George would often find him tucked away in one of his big chairs devouring some book he had culled from the old general's library in the basement--a room adjoining the one occupied by a firm of young lawyers--Pawson & Pawson (only one brother was alive)--with an entrance on the side street, it being of "no use to me" St.George had said--"and the rent will come in handy." Tales of the sea especially delighted the young fellow--the old admiral's blood being again in evidence--and so might have been the mother's fine imagination.

It was Defoe and Mungo Park and Cooke who enchained the boy's attention, as well as many of the chronicles of the later navigators.