"I think you're right, Capt, I'll have an extra hour's sleep; you can leave me, and when I want my breakfast I'll ring for it," and Lucius Haggard turned his face to the wall as the valet left the room. But he didn't attempt to sleep; he began once more to turn over the matter in his mind and to meditate upon the best course of action to pursue. Should he have an interview with the possessor of his father's heritage, the heir to what he had once looked upon as his own birthright? He well knew young George Haggard's generosity. Should he make a clean breast of the whole matter to George, and propose that come what might, they two should share and share alike by mutual consent? Of course such a contract would not be legally binding, as he well knew, but he felt that should George consent to such an arrangement, he, the more astute, could break the contract whenever he saw fit. If he could only get hold of those papers, or whatever they were, and destroy them, his position would become almost impregnable; he would still remain practically Lord Pit Town's heir. Should the old man be talked over, even he, could not keep him out of the title and the entailed property. Could it be that in her love and affection for him, or in a horror of a scandal being attached to her name or to her dead husband's, that Mrs. Haggard had destroyed what the little red box had once contained? No, he couldn't hope that. To whose interest was it that the proofs, whatever they were, should disappear? To his, and to his alone. But surely no one would commit so stupendous an act of villainy merely to benefit him, or to wrong the man whom he still called his brother? Would Spunyarn lay the whole matter before the old lord? And if he did so would Lord Pit Town take the tale for gospel without proof--proof, the very existence of which was now problematical? Should he at once go to the earl and pose as the outraged victim of a base conspiracy, with the hope of enlisting the powerful support of the head of the family? The more he thought over all these things, the more was he overwhelmed with a sense of his own impotence. If he could only get hold of what the box had contained and destroy it, he would be comparatively safe; for he felt that even were he to peaceably come into the possession of what he had once considered his own, what a life of doubt and terror would be unquestionably his, so long as those proofs, those dreadful proofs, existed. If the whole strange story were but a fabrication after all--even that was possible. Reginald Haggard was his father; both Lord Spunyarn and Mrs. Haggard had agreed in this. He had always stood much in awe of his father, and had never given him cause of offence. It was strange that, knowing him to be a bastard, his father should have treated him in all things as his legitimate heir. Why had his father failed to provide for him in any way by will? For the apparently simple reason that he looked upon him as