"Ah!" he sighed, "those days are long spent, and to me happiness can never return--never. My sin has risen against me; my one false step debars me from the pleasures of the world." His chin was sunk upon his breast, and he stood staring at the little curl, deep in reverie. At last, without another word, he raised it again to his hot, parched lips, and then folded it carefully in its wrapping. The envelope he broke open, took out the small piece of transparent paper, and spread it upon a piece of white foolscap in order to read it with greater ease. Slowly he pondered over every one of the almost microscopic words written there. As he read, his heavy brows were knit, as though some of the words puzzled him. He took a pencil from the inkstand and with it traced a kind of geometrical diagram of several straight lines upon the blotting-pad. These lines were similar to those he had traced with his stick in the dust when standing at the stile on that steep path in the lonely coppice near Godalming. Now and then he referred to the small document in the crabbed handwriting, and afterwards examined his diagram, as though to make certain of its correct proportions. Then, resting his chin upon his hands, he sat staring at the paper as it lay upon the blotting-pad within the zone of mellow lamplight. "It seems quite feasible," he said at last, speaking aloud. "Would that the suggestion were only true! But unfortunately it is merely a vague and ridiculous idea--a fantastic chimera of the imagination, after all. No," he added resolutely, "the hope is utterly false and misleading. It will not bear a second thought." With sad reluctance he refolded the piece of transparent paper, replaced it in the envelope, and put it back in the safe without resealing it. But from the same unlocked drawer he took a formidable-looking blue envelope, together with a tiny paper folded oblong, and sealed securely with white wax. The paper contained a powdered substance. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary carried them both back to his writing-table, and laid them before him. Upon the envelope was written in a bold legal hand, doubly underlined: "The Last Will and Testament of Dudley Waldegrave Chisholm, Esquire (Copy)." He smiled bitterly as he glanced at the superscription, then drew out the document and spread it before him, reading through clause after clause quite calmly. There were four pages of foolscap, engrossed with the usual legal margin and bound together with green silk. By it the Castle of Wroxeter and his extensive property in Shropshire were disposed of in a dozen words. The document was only lengthy by reason of the various bequests to old servants of the family and annuities to certain needy cousins. With the exception of the Castle and certain lands, the bulk of the great estate was, by that will, bequeathed to a well-known London hospital.