He made this announcement in very much the same tone in which he would have informed the minister that he was stricken with some dire disease.
“Is your trouble so great as that?” asked Mr. Durnford, in mock dismay.
“Yes, sir; and it’s a very serious matter indeed. It doesn’t seem right for me to be so rich, while so many have too little, and not a few nothing at all.”
“That can soon be rectified,” said Mr. Durnford.
“Perhaps so, sir; though it may not be so easy as you suppose. But there’s another matter that troubles me. I can’t think that this great wealth has been all acquired by fair means. Indeed I have only too much reason to suspect that it was not. I feel ashamed that some of the money which my uncle made should have become mine. I feel as though a curse were on it.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the minister, with a long-drawn sigh, “such feelings do you credit, Mr. Horn; but don’t you see that God means you to turn that curse into a blessing?”
“Yes; and yet I am almost inclined to wish my uncle had taken his money with him.”
“Scarcely a charitable wish, from any point of view,” said Mr. Durnford, smiling. “It seems to me that nothing could have been better than the arrangement as it stands.”
“Well, at any rate, I wish it were possible to restore their money to any persons who may have been wronged.”
“A laudible, but impossible wish, my dear sir; but, though you cannot restore your uncle’s wealth to those from whom it may have been wrongfully acquired, you can, in some measure, make atonement for the evil involved in its acquisition, by employing it for the benefit of those in general who suffer and are in need.”