396 THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



At all events he remains a bachelor, and the question 

 will be asked, " Who is to inherit the family estates at his 

 decease ? " This is answered in a few words. A younger 

 brother of his father's, not hitherto mentioned in these 

 pages, has three sons, and to the eldest of them will the 

 entail be continued. But why has he not been mentioned ] 

 For the simple reason, that his residence has been in 

 India since his twentieth year, and his reason for having 

 made it such, was the honourable feeling that an im- 

 prudent marriage, as regarded station in life, had, as he 

 imagined, rendered him somewhat obnoxious to the rest 

 of his family. Imprudent it might have been, inasmuch 

 as it dropped him a degree in the nicely-balanced general 

 scale of refined society, in other words, to a certain extent 

 he had lost caste ; unhappy, it was not, for a better wife 

 no man possessed, and it is more than probable that this 

 very circumstance may have had some weight in the 

 breast of his kind-hearted nephew, in determining him to 

 continue in the single state. At all events, a bachelor he 

 remains, and rather an old one at present ; but his house 

 is occasionally the resort of all the best families in the 

 neighbourhood ; and, by his general conduct and deport- 

 ment to all classes of persons, he shows, beyond the power 

 of refutation, that it is possible for a gentleman to devote 

 himself, with enthusiasm, to all the sports of flood and 

 field, simultaneously with the performance of all the 

 duties imposed upon him, both by God and man. 



FINIS 



Printed Ity MORRISO.N & GIBB LIMITED, Edinlnirgh 



