If the deceased made a will, where could it be? That was a knotty and interesting question. In its solution nobody took a deeper interest than the housekeeper. If it could be found, it would. She was as sure as of the fact of her existence (and of this, as she had never heard the Berkleyian theory propounded, she had not the slightest shadow of a doubt), that it would secure her the reward of long and meritorious servitude. The relatives and friends, who desired to find a will, and thought she might aid in its discovery, promised to reward her if her faith were not justified by the document when it turned up. The clerk was also zealous in searching for it every where that his sagacity pointed out as its probable lurking-place. Neither will nor draft of a will could, however, be found. The office and the house were ransacked. The safe, all the tin cases, drawers, and bundles of papers, were critically examined without success. Suspicion, it is needless to say, was rife. It must have been destroyed, was the conclusion almost uniformly arrived at; and the delinquent was marked out by the imagination of several. The lawyer's only son, who had been a riotous youth, and a sore trouble to his father, was the suspected criminal. It was notorious that this young man had drawn heavily upon his parent from time to time. He did not like the honourable profession of the law, and, in order to accommodate his taste, Mr. Franklin had paid considerable premiums to men of repute in other professions; but the student, or apprentice, forfeited the money thus paid at different times for his benefit. He had twice robbed his father of large amounts. The lawyer's patience and affection had apparently been exhausted some time before his death. The son, deprived of all allowance by which to sustain an idle life, was ultimately compelled to gain his living in a comparatively humble position, and when the father died he was earning a pound a week in a merchant's counting-house. Mr. Franklin, junior, who lodged with his mother, heard of his loss as soon as that lady did. He at once threw up his engagement, under the vague belief that a fortune had been dropped into his lap. He practically took possession of the offices and the house of the deceased, and had abundant opportunities of getting rid of any document obnoxious to his interests. Uncharitable rumour, therefore, set down as fact that this young man, had ascertained that an indignant parent had cut him off with or without the proverbial shilling; that the missing will was the instrument by which his just punishment had been effected; that he had discovered the will, and in it his fate; and that, in order to get the benefit of the statutable distribution of the estate, he had destroyed both the document and the draft thereof.