“Did you never hear,” said Agatha, “that there was one of the brothers who was a bad lot, and ran away. My sister says Wilfred is like him. I believe,” she added, “that he was her romance!” “Ha!” exclaimed Bernard, “that’s queer! We had a clerk in the bank who gave his name as Meriton, and who cut and ran the very day he heard that Sir Jasper Merrifield was coming out as Commandant. Yes, he was carroty. I rarely saw Wilfred at Clipstone, but this might very well have been the fellow, afraid to face his uncle.” Angela did not look delighted. “She is not destitute, you know,” she said, “I am her guardian, and she will have about two hundred a year.” “Is there a will?” asked Lance. “Oh, yes, I have it upstairs! It is all right. It was at the bank at Brisbane, and they kept a copy. I brought her because the Bishop said it was my duty to find out whether there were any relations.” “Certainly,” said Bernard. “In our own case, remember what joy Travis’s letter was!” Angela was silent, and presently said, “You shall see the will when I have unpacked it, but there is no doubt about my being guardian.” “Probably not,” said Bernard, rather drily. “If it be a valid will, signed by his proper name,” said Lance. Whereupon the two brothers fell into a discussion on points of law, not unlike the editor of the _Pursuivant_, as he had become known to his family, but most unlike the Bernard they had known before his departure for the East. At any rate it dissipated the emotional tone of the party; and by and by, when Bernard and Angela had agreed to make a bicycle rush to Minsterham the next day, “that is,” said Angela “if Lena is happy enough to spare me,” the Harewoods took leave. When the children had gone to bed, and Angela had stayed upstairs so long that Gertrude augured that she was waiting till her charge had gone to sleep, and that they should have no more of her henceforth but “Lena’s baulked stepmother,” she came down, bringing a document with her, which she displayed before her brothers. There was no question but that it was a will drawn up in due form, and very short, bequeathing his property at Carrigaboola, Queensland, to his daughter, Magdalen Susanna, and appointing Fulbert Underwood and Angela Margaret Underwood and “my brother Samuel” her guardian. It was dated the year after his daughter’s birth, and was signed Henry Field, with a word interposed, which, as Lance said, might be anything, but was certainly the right length for the first syllables of Merrifield. Bernard looked at it, and declared it was, to the best of his belief, the same signature as his former clerk used to write. “And this,” he said, looking at the seal, “is the crest of the Merrifield’s—the demi lion. I know it well on Sir Jasper’s seal ring.” “Have you nothing else, Angel?” asked Lance. “Here is the certificate of her baptism, but that will tell you nothing.”