J. S. Fletcher

“ Both men as a rule were good trenchermen—a life in the open-air helped them to hearty and never-failing appetite. This night neither ate much, and neither seemed disposed to talk much. Old Martin knew why he himself was silent, and why he was not inclined to food—he was too full of the Sutton affair. But he wondered what made his nephew so quiet, and why he did not replenish his plate after his usual fashion. As for Young Martin he had his own thoughts to occupy him, but he, too, wondered what made the elder so obviously thoughtful.
Old Martin remained quiet and meditative all the evening. ”

“ It was always a pleasure to him to get under his own roof-tree after a long day on the land or an afternoon at market or auction. There was the evening meal in company with his nephew; the easy chair and the newspaper afterwards; the pipe of tobacco and the glass of toddy before going to bed. And Old Martin and Young Martin, as most folk thereabouts were well aware, were more like companions than uncle and nephew; they had many tastes in common—hunting, shooting, sport in general, and the younger man was as keen a farmer as the elder. ”

“ Postlethwaite smiled and bowed,
“You apprehend my meaning exactly, my dear sir,” he said blandly. “Ruin is the word.”
“It’s not a very nice word to hear or to use in connection with any man,” said Martin Nelthorp.
Mr. Postlethwaite coughed. But the smile remained round his clean-shaven lips.
“The ruin of most men, my dear friend,” he said oracularly, “is brought about by themselves.”
“Just so,” said Martin Nelthorp. “All the same, the finishing touch is generally put to things by somebody else. You’re sure Sutton’s as badly off as what you make out?” ”

“ Very soon she, too, died, and the boy henceforward formed Martin’s one human interest. He devoted himself to him; educated him; taught him all that he himself knew of farming, and let it be known that when his time came his nephew would step into his shoes. The two were inseparable; now, when the boy had come to man’s age and the man had grown grey, they were known for many a mile round as Old Martin and Young Martin.
Old Martin knew, as he sat by the parlour fire, that the old feeling of hatred against Richard Sutton was by no means dead within him. ”

“ It was the worst sort of sorrow that could befall a man of his type of character, for he was both sensitive and proud, quick to feel an injury or a slight, slow to let the memory of either pass from him. It is said of a Yorkshireman that he will carry a stone in his pocket for ten years in expectation of meeting an enemy, and turn it at the end of that time if the enemy has not chanced along. Martin Nelthorp might have turned his stone twice, but he would have done so with no feeling of vindictiveness. ”

“ THE man of law, bland, courtly, old-world mannered, tilted back his chair, put the tips of his fingers together and smiled at the grey-haired, hard-featured man who sat, grim and silent, on the other side of his desk. ”

“ Nelthorp!” he said, in the tones of one pronouncing a final judgment. “It doesn’t matter a yard of that tape what either Sutton or his solicitors say. We know—know, mind!—that it is utterly impossible for him to take up the mortgages. He is at your mercy.”
Martin Nelthorp stared hard at Mr. Postlethwaite’s smiling face—somewhere far back in his mental consciousness he was wondering why Postlethwaite always smiled in that bland, suave manner when he dispensed advice from his elbow chair. ”