The formal statement of this succession of ripening characteristics need not be repeated, but the fact must be borne in mind.
This was the child who was delivered into the hands of Miss Silence Withers, her mother's half--sister, keeping house with her brother Malachi, a bachelor, already called Old Malachi, though hardly entitled by his years to such a venerable prefix.

Both these persons had inherited the predominant traits of their sad-eyed mother.

Malachi, the chief heir of the family property, was rich, but felt very poor.

He owned this fine old estate of some hundreds of acres.

He had moneys in the bank, shares in various companies, wood-lots in the town; and a large tract of Western land, the subject of a lawsuit which seemed as if it would never be settled, and kept him always uneasy.
Some said he hoarded gold somewhere about the old house, but nobody knew this for a certainty.