For the next two or three days, Sylvester was busy with his father's affairs. The will provided for a large sum to be paid to Usher, another to Roderick, while Sylvester was the residuary legatee, charged with a yearly allowance to Miss Lanyon and certain minor bequests. But after deducting the legacies to the Ushers, there was nothing left in the estate but Woodlands itself, and that was heavily mortgaged, and the mortgage had been bought up by Usher. Sylvester reviewed his own financial position. His professional income was fairly large, and showed every prospect of increasing year by year, but of capital he had little. Dorothy's future had to be provided for. Miss Lanyon must receive the amount specified in the will. Could he afford to pay the interest on the mortgage and keep up a large country house and grounds as well? He could not. Woodlands would have to go. The three thousand pounds which Roderick had fraudulently drawn from the estate would have made a considerable difference in Sylvester's calculations. From his father's books he discovered that this sum roughly represented the sale of certain stock a day or two before the cheque was forged, and lay at the bankers awaiting reinvestment. How did the knowledge of this reach Roderick? Sylvester was puzzled, for a man does not usually keep a balance of three or four thousand pounds to his credit account, and Roderick was too shrewd to run the risk of so large a cheque unless he knew there would be an adequate sum to meet it. Rightly he concluded that Mr. Usher had given his son the information. But whether Roderick was acquainted with the blackmailing secret he could not tell. An instinct of generosity, newly awakened, prompted the conjecture of Roderick's ignorance. On this assumption he arrived at what happened to be the correct solution: Roderick in desperate need of money had applied to Usher; the latter had refused; had suggested the forgery, knowing of the sale of stock, and had given him the cheque which he himself had once abstracted from Mr. Lan-yon's cheque-book so as to meet any sudden emergency, at the same time assuring his son against any unpleasant risks on the discovery of the forgery. Roderick's silence on the point Sylvester could only put down to his credit.