He could easily evade it, no doubt, by living in his own lodgings; but even then it was not possible that their mother should live under the same roof with her elder son.

For a long time he sat meditating, motionless, on the cushions, devising and rejecting various possibilities, and finding nothing that satisfied him.
But suddenly an idea took him by storm.

This fortune which had come to him.

Would an honest man keep it?
"No," was the first immediate answer, and he made up his mind that it must go to the poor.

It was hard, but it could not be helped.