This in itself chafed and irritated Ebben Owens, and he felt a bitter anger against the brother who had ignored him for so long, and was now stealing from him what was more precious to him than life itself.

He tried to rejoice in his son's golden prospects, and perhaps would have succeeded had Will shown himself less ready to drop the old associations of home and the past, and a more tender clinging to the friends of his youth; but this was far from being Will's state of feeling.

More and more he felt how incongruous were the simple ways of Garthowen with the formal and polished manners of his uncle's household, and that of the society to which his uncle's prestige had given him the entree.

He was not so callous as to feel no pain at the necessity of withdrawing himself entirely from his old relations with Garthowen, but he considered it his bounden duty to do so.

He had chosen his path; he had put his hand to the plough, and he must not look back, and the dogged persistence which was a part of his nature came to his assistance.
"_I_ could pay all your expenses, my boy," said his father, with a touching humility unnoticed by Will.