As he paused, preparatory to exerting greater force, Madge, brushing him aside, caught the poker from him. She drove the point against the wainscot with all her strength--once, twice, thrice. The wood was shivered into fragments. "There! I think that's done the business." So far as destroying the panel was concerned, it certainly had. Only splinters remained. The wall behind was left almost entirely bare. They pressed forward to see what the act of vandalism had disclosed. Between the wainscot and the party-wall there was a space of two or three inches. Among the cobwebs and the dust there was plainly something--something which was itself so encrusted with a coating of dust as to make it difficult, without closer inspection, to tell plainly what it was. Ella prevented Jack from making a grab at it. "Let Madge take it--it's hers--she's the finder." Madge, snatching at it with eager fingers, withdrew the something from its hiding-place. "Covered," exclaimed Jack, "with the dust of centuries!" "It's covered," returned the more practical Madge, "at any rate with the dust of a year or two." She wiped it with a napkin which she took from the sideboard drawer. "Why," cried Ella, "it's nothing but a sheet of paper." Jack echoed her words. "That's all--blue foolscap--folded in four." Madge unfolded what indeed seemed nothing but a sheet of paper. The others craned their necks to see what it contained. In spite of them she managed to get a private peep at the contents, and then closed it hastily. "Guess what it is," she said. "A draft on the Bank of Elegance for a million sterling." This was Jack. "I fancy it is some sort of legal document." This was Graham. Ella declined to guess. "Don't be so tiresome, Madge; tell us what it is?" "Mr. Graham is right--it is a legal document. It's a will, the will of Thomas Ossington. At least I believe it is. If you'll give me breathing space I'll read it to you every word." She drew herself away from them. When she was a little relieved of their too pressing importunities, she unfolded the paper slowly--with dramatic impressiveness. "Listen--to a voice from the grave." She read to them the contents of the document, in a voice which was a trifle shaky:-- "I give and bequeath, absolutely, this house, called Clover Cottage, which is my house, and all else in the world which at present is, or, in time to come, shall become my property, to the person who finds my fortune, which is hidden in this house, whoever the finder may chance to be. "I desire that the said finder shall be the sole heir to all my worldly goods, and shall be at liberty to make such use of them as he or she may choose. "I do this because I have no one else to whom to leave that of which I am possessed. "I have neither kith nor kin--nor friend. "My wife has left me, my friend has betrayed me; my child is dead. "I am a lonely man. "May my fortune bring more happiness to the finder than it has ever brought to me.