“Yes, I see,” said Julius.
“The twelve hundred dollars would be secured by a mortgage, which you would eventually pay off.”
Here Mr. Taylor explained to Julius, whose knowledge of real estate transactions was limited, the nature of a mortgage, and the laws relating to it.
“I should like to buy it, if you think best,” said our hero, at length.
“Then I will arrange matters, as your guardian. By the time you are twenty-one, you will, I venture to say, be worth quite a little property.”
“But what shall I do with the place?” asked Julius. “I can’t go to live there.”
“You may as well defer that till you are married,” said Mr. Taylor; a suggestion which made Julius smile. “The proper course is to find a tenant for it. The rent will enable you to pay taxes and the interest on the mortgage, and probably yield you a profit beside. Even if not, you will be richly repaid in time by the increased value of the property.”
No time was lost in effecting this transaction, as Mr. Cathcart was anxious to leave Brookville as soon as possible. The money was drawn from the savings bank, and almost before he knew it Julius found himself the owner of a house and outbuildings, and ten acres of{199} land. He went out to see it, and it gave him a peculiar feeling to think that he, late a ragged New York street boy, was now the proprietor of a landed estate.
“I wonder what Jack and Marlowe would say if they knew it,” he thought. “It would make Marlowe mad, I know. He never at any time liked me very much, and now he hates me bad enough, I am afraid.”
A week after the property passed into our hero’s hands, a respectable-looking man called at Mr. Taylor’s door. He was a young mechanic, a carpenter, who had recently established himself in Brookville.