“A most unnatural thing to cut off his own son for a grandchild whose father had already received his portion,” young Schofield said; and, still more exasperated, Mrs. Walter Scott replied, “I do not know that Roger _was_ cut off. I only know that Frank was to have Millbank, with its appurtenances, and I’ll search this room until I find the stolen paper. What was that you took from the drawer, boy?” Roger was awake now to the situation. He understood that Mrs. Walter Scott believed his father had deprived him of Millbank, the beautiful home he loved so much, and he understood another fact, which, if possible, cut deeper than disinheritance. She suspected him of stealing the will. The Irving blood in the boy was roused. His eyes were not like Jessie’s now, but flashed indignantly as he, too, rose to his feet, and, confronting the angry woman, demanded what she meant. “Show me that paper in your pocket, and tell me why that drawer was locked this morning, and why you had the key,” she said; and Roger replied, “You tried the drawer then, it seems, and found it locked. Tell me, please, what business you had with my father’s private drawer and papers?” “I had the right of a daughter,—an older sister, whose business it was to see that matters were kept straight until some head was appointed,” Mrs. Walter Scott said, and then she asked again for the package which Roger had taken from the drawer. There was a moment’s hesitancy on Roger’s part; then, remembering that she could not compel him to let her read his mother’s farewell message, he took the sea-stained letter from his pocket and said: “It was from my mother. She wrote it on the “Sea Gull,” just before it took fire. It was found on the table where father sat writing to me when he died. I believe he was going to send it to me. At all events it is mine now, and I shall keep it. Hester gave it to me this morning, and I put it in the private drawer and took the key with me. I knew nothing of this will, or any other will, except that father always talked as if I would have Millbank, and told me of some improvements it would be well to make in the factory and shoe-shop in the course of a few years, should he not live so long. Are you satisfied with my explanation!” He was looking at the lawyer, who replied: “I believe you, boy, just as I believe that Squire Irving destroyed his second will, if he ever made one, which, without any disrespect intended to the lady, I doubt, though she may have excellent reasons for believing otherwise. It would have been a most unnatural thing for a father to cast off with a legacy his only son, and knowing Squire Irving as I did, I cannot think he would do it.” The lawyer had forsaken the lady’s cause entirely, and wholly forgetting herself in her wrath she burst out with— “As to the sonship there may be a question of doubt, and if such doubt ever crept into Squire Irving’s mind he was not a man to rest quietly, or to leave his money to a stranger.”