Her eyes sparkled. “That would be just ripping!” she said. “Thank you ever so much.” “Very well. I’ll see about taking out probate, and let you know when I shall want you again.” He had adopted his professional manner and looked at his watch markedly. “There isn’t anything else just now. Good-bye, Miss Cotterill; and hearty congratulations—in a double sense.” When Winnie Cotterill had departed, the lawyer took up another paper that was lying on his desk, and read it carefully. The sealed packet he had mentioned to Canon Fittleworth had contained it. It was in the form of a letter from Reginald Templeton. My Dear Crosby, We are all of us in the lap of the gods, and sometimes they drop us before we think they will. Anyhow, when a man starts, as I am starting, for some considerable time abroad, one never knows what may happen. So this is for your private eye in case I cut the traces or they are cut for me—and don’t see you again. You have my will, in which I leave the little I’ve got to Winnie Cotterill—and I expect you know the reason. But there’s something else I want to tell you about the girl, which I think you ought to know in case the unforeseen may happen—as it does sometimes. Her name isn’t really Cotterill at all—it’s Forbes. Don’t start, my friend, there’s nothing wrong with her parentage. The facts are these. Her mother, Mabel Cotterill, didn’t marry me as I hoped she would. She chose a man named Percy Forbes, a young lawyer. He turned out a wrong ’un. When Winifred was about four years old, he was tried on a serious charge of embezzlement, and sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude. He hadn’t got a leg to stand upon, it was a clear case. He and his wife were living at the time—well, it doesn’t matter where. But Mrs. Forbes naturally left the neighbourhood; in fact I advised her to do so. The question arose about Winifred. The mother didn’t want the child to hear of the family disgrace, so she went to a neighbourhood where nobody knew her, and took her maiden name of Cotterill. We used to talk over matters sometimes—as to what would happen when Forbes came out of prison—and she hated the thought of the child ever knowing that her father had been a convict. But Forbes didn’t come out of prison—he died at Princetown in the third year of his sentence. So Winifred was brought up to believe that he died when she was four years old—and that’s all she knows. And her mother stuck to the name of Cotterill. What do I want you to do? Probably nothing, my friend. I trust you to keep up the fiction. A name doesn’t matter, and the girl will, I hope, marry some good fellow, and so get another name that she’s a right to. You will agree that it is best not to let her have the burden of her father’s disgrace.