She saw it might be safer not to know too much. ‘Will you do it then?’ ‘I won’t touch the desk, if you mean that,’ said Laura. ‘Mr. Lindsay generally takes a nap about four in the afternoon. I could easily----’ At that moment Aunt Jean made her appearance, followed by a servant with a tray, and the conference was at an end. In the course of the day, Semple managed to take the desk out of his uncle’s room while the old man was asleep; and he had no great difficulty in opening it by means of a picklock, which he had borrowed. This done, he found and burned the paper of instructions. CHAPTER XXIII. DAVID MACGOWAN GETS INTO TROUBLE. The first thing that caught Alec Lindsay’s eye when he went down to the office next morning was the draft of his uncle’s will. No corrections had been made in it; no suggestions had been written in the margin; and assuming that the managing clerk had looked over it on the preceding evening, he was about to send it out to the law-stationer’s, when he remembered Beattie’s hint that it would be more prudent to have it ‘engrossed’ in the office. Taking the paper in his hand, he went into the ‘outer office,’ where four clerks sat whose duty it was to do the more mechanical part of the work of the conveyancing department. ‘Where’s Hobson?’ asked Alec. ‘He and Graves are out, comparing an abstract,’ said one of the clerks, whose name was Hill. ‘Mr. Beattie told them yesterday they were to go the first thing this morning.’ ‘Then you had better leave off what you are doing, Hill, and engross this will.’ ‘Very sorry, sir, but Mr. Beattie has given me this settlement and this mortgage to do,’ pointing to the papers and parchments as he spoke; ‘and he particularly told me not to leave them till I had finished them.’ MacGowan’s services were available; but Alec would have preferred to entrust the draft to one of the other clerks. ‘When will Hobson and Graves be back?’ he asked. ‘Not until late, I expect,’ answered Hill; ‘they have gone into the country--to St. Albans.’ It was more than probable that the two absent clerks would contrive to make a day of it at St. Albans, so Alec turned to MacGowan and asked if he were busy. He was not. ‘I wish you would engross this, then,’ said Alec, giving him the draft; ‘and see you hold your tongue about it when you go outside,’ he added in a lower tone. MacGowan promised obedience with more fervour than was necessary, and Alec returned to his own room. Left to himself, MacGowan laid the draft before him and measured its length with a practised eye. There was abundance of time for him to finish engrossing it before the luncheon-hour. He was glad of this, for it was pay-day, and he knew by experience that it was very doubtful if he would be back at his desk in the afternoon.