These heirlooms at auction
sold so unexpectedly well, that my uncle acquired a taste, as it were,
of what might be done. He could always prove that the rents went to
the mortgagees, and that he had nothing on which to exist, so on
several occasions he obtained permission from the courts to cut timber
and sell pictures, until he denuded the estate and made an empty barn
of the old manor house. He lived like any labourer, occupying himself
sometimes as a carpenter, sometimes as a blacksmith; indeed, he made a
blacksmith's shop of the library, one of the most noble rooms in
Britain, containing thousands of valuable books which again and again
he applied for permission to sell, but this privilege was never
granted to him. I find on coming into the property that my uncle quite
persistently evaded the law, and depleted this superb collection, book
by book, surreptitiously through dealers in London. This, of course,
would have got him into deep trouble if it had been discovered before
his death, but now the valuable volumes are gone, and there is no
redress. Many of them are doubtless in America, or in museums and
collections of Europe.'
'You wish me to trace them, perhaps?' I interpolated.
'Oh, no; they are past praying for.
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