"But, dear Mr. Grahame--I noticed how you called me your dear!--it is your will. Here's your signature, attested by two witnesses. After all, there's only a slight difference between the one you saw and this." "A slight difference, you--you----!" In his efforts to find an expletive to fit the occasion, his struggles for breath became greater. She went gaily on. "The only difference is that I get everything instead of Margaret Wallace, and that instead of my five thousand pounds she gets five farthings. Surely the trifling substitution of a few words won't matter to you in the least, Mr. Grahame." It seemed that it mattered a good deal. After a tremendous effort he regained some portion of his voice, enough to enable him to burst into a string of expletives. "You--you----! You----! It's a fraud! a----fraud! It's a swindle! Don't you flatter yourself that it will stand! Don't you think I'll let it stand! Wait till Twelves comes, then I'll show you!" "Wait till Dr. Twelves comes? Suppose he never comes?" "What do you mean? What are you doing with that pillow?" "Suppose Dr. Twelves never comes, what is to prevent this will from standing?" "What are you doing with that pillow, you----!" "I'm going to stop your saying such dreadful things. It pains me to have to listen to such language." She snatched away one pillow from beneath his head, and then a second. She had propped him in such a way that when he was deprived of their support his head fell back, and there recurred the scene of the previous afternoon. He began to choke; his unwieldy frame was shaken by convulsive efforts to breathe; stertorous gasps proceeded from the region of his chest. He presented a dreadful spectacle. The sight did not seem to in any way affect the woman who was standing by his bed, with the pillows still in her hand. She pressed the bolster farther up his back so that his head declined at an acute angle; applying her palm to the point of his chin she forced it lower still. Then she said-- "I'll place the will as you wished me, Mr. Grahame, under your pillow". She placed it there, under the single pillow which remained; then she left the room. CHAPTER XIII THE ENCOUNTER IN THE WOOD