“I should like you to understand, Dr. Quixtus,” said Henslow, “that until we found that envelope I had no idea that your uncle had made a fresh will. I came here with the old one in my hand, which I drew up and which has been in my office-safe for fifteen years. Under that, I need not tell you, you were, with the exception of a few trifling legacies, the sole legatee. I am deeply grieved.” “Let me see that date again,” said Quixtus. He pressed his hands to his eyes and thought. It was the day before his arrival on his last visit. The telegram announcing Mathew Quixtus’s sudden death had brought a gleam of light into a soul which for a week had been black with misery. It awakened him to a sense of outer things. A sincere affection for the old man had been a lifelong habit. It was a shock to realise that he was no longer alive. Besides having always unconsciously taken a child’s view of death, he felt genuinely sorry, for his uncle’s sake, that he should have died. Impulses of pity, tenderness, regret, stirred in his deadened heart. He forthwith set out for Devonshire, and when he arrived at Croxton, stood over the pinched waxen face till the tears came into his eyes. He had summoned Tommy Burgrave, the only other member of the family in England, but Tommy had not been able to attend. He had caught cold while painting in the open air, and was in bed with a slight attack of congestion of the lungs. Quixtus was alone in the great house. With the aid of Henslow he made the funeral arrangements. The old man was laid to rest in the quiet churchyard of Croxton. Half the county came to pay their tribute to his memory, and shook Quixtus by the hand. Then he came back to the house, and in the presence of one or two of the old servants, the will was read. It had been dated the day before his arrival on his last visit. The thing had been written and signed and witnessed and sealed, and was lying in that locked drawer in the library all the time that the old man was welcoming him, flattering him, showing him deference. All the suavity and deference had been mockery. The old man had made him a notorious geck and gull. His pale blue eyes hardened, and he turned an expressionless face to the lawyer. “I’m afraid it would not be possible,” said Henslow, “to have the will set aside on the ground of, say—senility—on the part of the testator.” “My uncle had every faculty at its keenest when he wrote it,” said Quixtus, “including that of merciless cruelty.” “It was a heartless jest,” the lawyer agreed. “If you will do me a service, Mr. Henslow, you might be kind enough to instruct one of the servants to pack up my bag and forward it to my London address. I am going now to the railway station.” The lawyer looked at his watch and put out a detaining hand. “There’s not a decent train for two or three hours.” “I would rather,” said Quixtus, “ride a tortoise home than stay in this house another moment.”