‘Ah! A minister, I suppose. Your uncle is a good deal under his influence, I dare say?’ ‘No; I don’t think so. And really I don’t know that Dr. Mackenzie even suggested it.’ ‘Well, it’s no business of mine,’ said Beattie, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Will you give me the paper of instructions?’ said Alec, after a pause. ‘Certainly; here it is.’ And Mr. Beattie turned to the other documents before him, with an air that said, ‘I have wasted too many minutes already.’ But as soon as Alec had left the room, he relapsed into his former attitude. Presently he rose and paced up and down the room with slow, cat-like steps. Then he paused at the window, and stood there for more than half an hour, looking out at the blank wall opposite him. ‘That might do,’ he said to himself at last, as he turned away. ‘It ought to succeed. There is a risk, certainly; but we can’t help that.’ Then Mr. Beattie put on his hat, and going to a telegraph-office some little way off, he sent this message to his friend James Semple: ‘Meet me at the Cosmopolitan this afternoon at four o’clock.’ About three o’clock he went into Alec Lindsay’s room. ‘Well, how are you getting on with the will?’ ‘The draft is nearly finished. I have not been able to go on with it steadily, or it would have been done sooner. Will you look over it now?’ ‘You can put it on my table when it is ready. I suppose you will send it to your uncle to-night?’ ‘Yes. I will send it by to-night’s post.’ ‘You had better say in your note that if the draft is satisfactory it may be returned to us to-night, and we will bring it to be executed on Thursday morning. There will be plenty of time to have it engrossed to-morrow.’ ‘Very well. I will do that.’ ‘And, I say, Lindsay, I think you had better not send it to the law stationer’s.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because the man who copied your draft at the law stationer’s would be sure to speak of it. How foolish your uncle would look if a paragraph about his bequest got into the papers, and if he afterwards changed his mind, as very likely he may do.’ Alec shook his head. ‘You don’t know my uncle, or you wouldn’t talk of his changing his mind. But I’ll give it to one of the fellows in the office to engross.’ ‘It is much better to have things of that sort copied in the office.’ With these words Beattie left the room, and shortly afterwards he quietly went out. When Alec finished the draft, he took it to the managing clerk’s room, and as no one was there he left it on the table as he had been told to do. About five o’clock he wrote the note to his uncle which Beattie had suggested to him, and he told the clerk whose duty it was to post the letters that Mr. Beattie would give him the document that was to be sent with the note. Having done this, Alec went home.