housekeeper who had been with him for so many years, his personal attendant, who had been very kind, who had taken great care of him, were scarcely sorry. “I suppose, Miss, as you’ll be having Miss Stella home now,” Mrs. Simmons said, though she had a white handkerchief in her hand for appearance sake. And the man was chiefly anxious about his character and the testimonials to be given him. “I hope as I never neglected my duty. And master was an ’eavy ’andful, Miss,” he said, with relief, too, in his countenance. Katherine thought she would be willing to give half of all she had in the world to secure one genuine mourner, one who was truly sorry for her father’s death. Was she herself sorry? Her heart ached with the pity and the horror of it, but sorrow is a different sentiment from that. In the meantime the solicitor and executor were in Mr. Tredgold’s sitting-room which he had occupied so long. A fire had been lighted in haste, to make the cold uninhabited place a little more cheerful. It was lighted by a lamp which hung over the table, shaded so as to concentrate its light on that spot, leaving all the rest of the room in the dark. And the two forms on either side of it were not of a character to be ennobled by the searching light. The solicitor was a snuffy man, with a long lean throat and a narrow head, with tufts of thin, grey hair. He had a ragged grey beard of the same description, long and ill grown, and he wore spectacles pushed out from his eyes and projecting as if they might fall off altogether. Mr. Turny had a shining bald head, which reflected the light, bent, as it was, over the papers on the table. They had been examining these papers, searching for the will which they expected to find there, but had come as yet upon no trace of it. “I should have thought,” said Mr. Turny, “that he’d have had another will drawn out as soon as that girl ran away--indeed I was in a great mind to take steps----” He stopped here, reflecting that it was as well perhaps to say nothing of Fred and what those steps were. But Mr. Sturgeon had heard of the repeated visits of the family, and knew that young Fred was “on the outlook,” as they said, and knew. “Ah, here it is at last,” Mr. Sturgeon said. He added, after a few minutes, in a tone of disappointment: “No, it’s the old will of ten years ago, the one I sent him down at his own request after the young lady ran away. I kept expecting for a long time to have his instructions about another, and even wrote to him on the subject. I suppose he must have employed some man here. This, of course, must be mere waste paper now.” “What was the purport of it?” Mr. Turny asked.