The most cowardly of all wild beasts, from a wolf down to a rat, will show fight when he is cornered, and the “Major” was, probably, never a physical poltroon. Well was it, therefore, that Ashbel Norton had been an “Eton boy” and was a master of the art of self-defence. Well too, probably, that his graceless brother had no better weapon than his huge fist at his command. Ashbel warded off very skilfully the half-dozen furious blows which were rained upon him, but without once “striking back,” and by that time there was a heavier hand than that of Judge Danvers could have been, upon the shoulder of the Major, and the “thud” of an officer’s “locust” was beginning to sound on his head and arms. It was a hopeless sort of business, and the sudden gust of uncontrollable rage died away into a fit of utter dejection. “Yes, Ash,” he exclaimed, as he was again forced down upon a chair, “you’ve found me. I should have made it all right myself, in a little while. I was making arrangements for that very thing.” “Make it right, Robert?” exclaimed Ashbel Norton. “You make it right? I won’t speak of the money you’ve wasted or the family you have disgraced. I won’t say anything of the way you ruined yourself and tried to ruin others! Make it right? Can you make it right with Lydia, for all she has suffered, or with your own wife?” “Ashbel,” huskily replied the now drooping and trembling Major, “don’t speak of my wife. I saw her death in the papers, years ago.” “And she died of a broken heart,” interrupted Ashbel. “But Lydia,” continued the Major, “I can do something for her. I’ve kept every paper and----” “Robert,” exclaimed Ashbel, “Lydia, too, is dead, and that, also, is on your own conscience.” “Lydia dead? That, too, on me?” half vacantly responded the Major. Whatever may have been on his “conscience,” just then, if indeed he still kept any such thing about him, his mind was grasping at a very different idea, for his next question was: “And did she leave a will?” “Indeed she did,” replied Ashbel, half angrily. “You’ve no chance there. Judge Danvers has a copy of it in his safe.” The Major stole a quick glance at the table where the valise had been, but it had disappeared. That too, was now “in the safe.” “And so Lydia’s dead,” slowly soliloquized the Major, as he bent his eyes upon the floor. “And she’s made a will. That was a turn of things that never occurred to me.” “Nothing ever did seem to occur to you, except your own brutal selfishness,” remarked Mr. Ashbel Norton, but the Major turned now to Judge Danvers, with: “I’m ready to hear anything you’ve got to say about that valise, Judge.” “Say?” exclaimed Ashbel Norton. “I’m the only man who has anything to say about that, Judge Danvers. You will understand that he has nothing more to do with any of those effects.”