His own thoughts, such as they might be, seemed of an eminently satisfactory nature. Miriam was out--had been sent out purposely during the process of will-signing. Thus it fell out that Mr. Byrne now found himself temporarily deprived of the services of his daughter. But that did not trouble him in the least. He liked to be waited upon--as most men do--but he was not above looking after his own comforts when there was no one else to do it for him. All through life he had been in the habit of celebrating any pleasant little event, or successful stroke of business, by taking something "on the strength of it," as he termed it; and it was hardly likely that he should pretermit such an excellent observance on the present occasion. Accordingly, he no sooner found himself alone than he proceeded to charge and light the inevitable pipe, and to mix for himself the inevitable tumbler of grog. With his chair tilted back on its hind legs, his feet on the table, his wig awry, his pipe in his mouth, and his steaming glass before him, Mr. Byrne was quietly meditating over the day's proceedings, when, without any preliminary knock, the door that gave egress on to the landing was softly opened, and the head of Pringle, Mr. Van Duren's clerk, was thrust into the room. His glassy eyes fixed themselves on Byrne, but without any apparent sign of intelligence lighting up their dull depths. For a few seconds the two men stared at each other without speaking. Byrne was, in fact, too much taken aback to utter a word. "Beg pardon. I thought the governor was here," said Pringle at last. "See he isn't. Sorry to intrude." With that he withdrew his head and shut the door as softly as he had opened it. "That drunken fool has seen enough to spoil everything!" cried Byrne, as he started to his feet. "What an ass I must have been not to lock the door! My only chance is that he may have had so much to drink as to have forgotten all about what he saw by to-morrow morning." Pringle, having shut the door of Mr. Byrne's room, stood still on the mat, while he indulged in one of his noiseless, malicious laughs. "I thought the old boy was after some private little game of his own," he said; "and I thought I shouldn't be long before I spotted him. A disguise--eh? And no more deaf, I'll swear, than I am! Haven't I listened at the keyhole, and heard him and the girl talking quite natural and easy like? And then Van Duren's sweet on the girl, but the girl looks too wide awake to be sweet on him, without she thinks him rich, and wants a husband. I can't make out just yet what it all means, but, anyhow, I don't think it means much good to Van Duren, and so long as it don't mean any good to him I sha'n't interfere. I'll watch and say nothing, and if I only find that the pair of them are weaving a net round Van Duren, won't I give them a helping hand! That is," he added, as if suddenly correcting himself, "that is, provided it don't interfere with my own little game."