"None!"
"Them shares, for instance?"
"There will be no change in them," David replied. "In two months' time he will know it."
"And he'll have forty thousand pounds to find, eh?—forty thousand pounds which he will never be able to raise!" Richard Vont muttered, his eyes curiously bright. "There isn't an acre of land here that isn't mortgaged over and over again."
"You'll make him a bankrupt, I suppose," David said thoughtfully.
"Ay, a bankrupt!" his uncle repeated, lingering over the word with a fierce joy. "But there's something more as'll fall to your lot, David," he went on,—"something more—and the time's none so far off."
David moved in his chair uneasily.
"Something more?"
"Ay, ay!" the old man assented. "You'll find it hard, my boy, but you'll keep your word. You've got that much of the Vonts in your blood. Your word's a bond with you."
"Tell me," David begged, "about that something more?"