“How could he?” the doctor asked, and Everard replied:
“I hardly know. I believe, though, it was about some house or piece of land, of which Mrs. Hastings held the deed for Rossie, and this John thought he ought to share it, at least, and seemed to think it a fortune, when in fact it proved to be worth only two thousand dollars, which is all Rosamond has of her own.”
“Perhaps he did not know how little there was, and thought it unjust for his half-sister to have all his father left, and he nothing,” the doctor said, and it never once occurred to Everard to wonder how he knew that Mr. Hastings left all to his daughter, and nothing to his son.
He was wholly unsuspicious, and went on:
“Possibly; at all events he worried his stepmother into hysterics by coming there one day in winter, and demanding first the deed or will, and second his sister, whom he said his father gave to his charge. But I settled him!”
“Yes?” the doctor said, interrogatively, and Everard continued:
“Father was gone, and this wretch, who must have been in liquor, was bullying my mother, and declaring he would go to the room where Mrs. Hastings was fainting for fear of him, when I came in from riding, and just bade him begone; and when he said to me sneeringly, ‘Oh, little David, what do you think you can do with the giant, you have no sling?’ I hit him a cut with my riding-whip which made him wince with pain, and I followed up the blows till he left the house vowing vengeance on me for the insult offered him.”
“And since then?” the doctor asked.
“Since then I have never seen him. After Mrs. Hastings died he wrote an impertinent letter to father asking the guardianship of his sister, but we had promised her mother solemnly never to let her fall into his hands or under his influence, and father wrote him such a letter as settled him; at least, we have never heard from him since, and that is eight years ago. Nor should I know him either, for it was dark, and he all muffled up.”
“And have you no fear of him, that he may yet be revenged? People like him do not usually take cowhidings quietly,” the doctor asked.