"I can, I can," said Quarles, with ready sympathy, and with a few dexterous questions he set Oglethorpe talking about the dead man. Never surely has a man had his virtues treated more lovingly or his faults so little remembered. To illustrate some reminiscence of his adopted father, Oglethorpe led us from room to room to show us some cabinet or picture. It seemed to me, as I looked round, that there were a thousand places where a will might be securely hidden, and my sympathy went out to this young fellow who stood to lose what there could be no doubt he was intended to possess. We came presently to the old man's sanctum. Quarles had not asked to see it. He had followed Oglethorpe, content to listen to him, and only asking a short question at intervals. He seemed to grow keener in this room. "Was he here a great deal?" the professor asked, looking round. "He did all his business here, and if he wanted to talk to me seriously we came in here. He always put down the check for my college expenses on this table with, 'There, my dear boy, don't spend it foolishly and don't get into debt'--always the same words. I can hear them now. It is a comfort to me to remember that I gave him no anxiety on that score." "Of course this room has been searched very thoroughly?" "The whole house has been searched from garret to cellar, but you are at liberty to look where you please." "It would be superfluous labor, no doubt," Quarles answered. "Tell me, Mr. Oglethorpe, during this search were there any surprises? It seems certain that if a will exists it must be in an altogether unexpected place. Now were things generally found in unexpected places? For example, there is a safe in that corner, I see; did you by any chance find a pair of old slippers securely locked up in it?" "There was nothing so eccentric as that," said Oglethorpe, "but certainly we did come across unexpected things. Some old pipes were locked in a cabinet in the drawing-room. We found a mass of worthless papers in that safe, while some valuable documents were under some old clothes at the bottom of a drawer in his bedroom. In that chest by the window, which a burglar would find difficult to pick, he had locked some fragments of a worthless china vase, and in this table drawer, which has no lock at all, he kept the few letters he had received from my mother. He looked upon them as one of the greatest treasures he possessed, yet anyone might have opened the drawer and read the letters. Yes, the dear old man was a little eccentric in that way." "Kept his old clothes, useless papers, broken fragments. He did not like throwing things away." "That is true." "I suppose this room is much as he left it," said Quarles, picking up the waste-paper basket and turning over the papers in it. "Yes; practically nothing has been moved or altered in the whole house. I had everything put back exactly where it was found. You notice that even the paper basket has not been emptied."