The lawyer, a fussy little man, with a sharp, keen manner, and sharp, keen gray eyes, raised his silver-rimmed glasses above his bushy white eyebrows, and said: 'My dear sir, I sent a copy of your respected father's will to Egypt.' 'Addressed to me?' 'Yes.' 'I never got it.' 'Why?' 'We were holding the lines in front of Ramleh at that time; the Arabs made free with the mail-bags, and lit their pipes with the contents, no doubt, in the desert beyond Ghizeh.' 'My dear sir, how lawless of them!' 'I have thought about this will at times, till I have become stupid--woolly in fact, and hated the name of it.' 'Your good father-- 'Ah,' interrupted Roland, a little testily, 'I fear we only looked upon him latterly as the family banker, and he was useful in that way--very.' 'To your brother in the Guards perhaps too much so,' said the lawyer gravely. 'Well--about the cursed document itself?' began Roland a little impetuously. 'Strong language, my dear sir--strong language! The terms of your respected father's will are, I must say, a little peculiar, and were framed much against my advice; though his old family agent, I scarcely felt justified in drawing out the document.' 'I have heard that its conditions are outrageous.' 'They are--my dear sir--they are.' 'Such as no respectable lawyer should have drawn up,' said Roland sternly. 'Captain Lindsay, there you are wrong--severe--but I excuse you,' replied Mr. M'Wadsett, perking up his bald, shining head, as he drew the document in question from a charter box, after some trouble in finding the key thereof, and which Roland eyed--without touching it--with a very gloomy and louring expression. 'Dear me--dear me,' muttered M'Wadsett, as, seating himself in a well-stuffed circular chair, and adjusting his spectacles, he glanced over the document. 'He wrote: "I have delayed making my will so long as I have thought it safe to do so, but I am an old man now, and the gross and wilful extravagance of----" Shall I read it all, Captain Lindsay? The first few clauses are unimportant enough: £1,000 to Sir Harry Maule; some jewellery to his daughter Hester--bequests to the servants--Funnell the butler, Buckle the head groom, and then with the provisions appointed for your sister and yourself----' 'Comes the "crusher," I suppose,' interrupted Roland, crashing his right heel on the floor. 'Precisely so, my dear sir; I don't wonder that you feel it; but listen and I shall read it all.' 'Please don't,' cried Roland; 'lawyers make everything so lengthy, so elaborate, so full of circumlocution and irritating repetition. Cut it short--the gist of it.' 'Is--that all the estates, real and personal, are devised and bequeathed by the testator to his wife, Deborah Sharpe or Lindsay.' 'For life? 'No--to do with as she pleases in all time coming; the whole power of willing everything away is left in her hands, as you may read for yourself here.' There was a silence of a minute.