I left to the lawyer the management of everything connected with Mr. Fairhaven's will. As he had predicted, it was disputed, on the ground of the testator's incapacity. But it was proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Mr. Fairhaven was in the full possession of his reasoning faculties not only at the time he made his will, but up to the very day of his death. The validity of the will was unhesitatingly upheld by the judges, and the property came into my possession. Nevertheless the case was not finally settled until after the lapse of many months, and during this time the newspapers were busy upon Mr. Fairhaven's eccentricity. 'It remains to be seen,' said an influential paper, in a leading article, 'and it is a matter of much curiosity, how the legatee will administer his trust' I found myself quite a public character, and I was inundated with applications and with letters of advice. But my resolution was already formed.

I did not disclose this resolution to the Silvers while the matter was in the law-courts. So great was my anxiety that I feared, even up to the last moment, that some chance or quibble of the law would deprive me of the means for carrying it out. Not until everything was settled, not until the property was declared to be mine incontestably, not until it was realised, and the money invested in the Funds, did I consider myself free to open my mind to my dear friends. I had my last interview with the lawyer; he had acted throughout in the most straightforward manner, and I thanked him sincerely.

'And yet,' he remarked, 'you said once to Mr. Fairhaven that if there were in the world one lawyer where now there are a hundred, the world would be the better for it.'

'I think so still,' I replied.

'Strange,' he said, with a touch of pleasant satire, 'that the world has never been able to get along without us.'

'Never!' I exclaimed. 'Nay, you must be mistaken.'

'I am not mistaken. I can go as far back as the days of Abraham for proof. Did not that patriarch buy "the field of Ephron, which was in Macphelah, which was before Mamre; the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about?" The very words we read in Genesis. Do you mean to tell me that any one but a lawyer could have written such a description? We have our uses, my dear sir!'

I smiled. I was too happy to argue with him, and we parted the best of friends. In the evening I found myself, as I had designed, in Buttercup-square. I knocked at Mrs. Silver's door, and she herself opened it. Only Rachel and she were at home. I had kept her fully acquainted with the progress of affairs, and she knew that I expected to have my final interview with the lawyer on this day.

'All is settled,' I said. 'What do you see in my face?'

'Happiness.'