The letter was a long one, and was written from Foley’s Hotel, Cork.
“Tuesday afternoon, February 2nd.
“My dear Theo” (it began),
“I found this book in the room next yours the morning I went to nail up the door. When I went down after that to the lodge to abuse Brian about letting Moll up to the house, he threatened me in what I thought a queer way. While I was there Moll came in, and when she saw me, she tried to hide a book she had in her hand. I just saw the cover of it, and I knew it was the one I had picked up that morning and left down in my own room. I took it from her, and when I was coming home I looked at it. Then I knew right enough what old Brian had been driving at. You’ll see for yourself when you read it.
“All the same, I know now that the biggest part of the fault was Moll’s, though that time I didn’t think so. Anyhow, I knew that my father had swindled you, and that if what I thought was true, I hadn’t a right even to speak to you; and I thought the only way out of it was to do what I knew would make the governor leave the property away from me. Besides, Brian knew, and he told me plain enough, that if I did not do what he wanted, he would disgrace my father and all the family. But I wouldn’t have minded that so much only for the thought of its being your father, and thinking that it was mine who had robbed him, and worse. But, as I told you before, it was really Moll who did it. She thought she’d square things for the governor, and that then, maybe, he’d marry her. He told me that himself. She was so sold then when he wouldn’t do it, that it, and everything else, sent her off her head. That room she used to be in was your father’s, and I hear now she used to be playing there all the time with the little book. I suppose she knew somehow that it was his, and the servants never noticed one way or the other.
“I will never forget what you did for me. I was very near shooting myself that afternoon after you were talking to me in the plantation, but I thought that would only make it worse for you.
“This is the longest letter I ever wrote, and now I have no more to tell you. We will be starting for London directly, and we sail to-morrow. Maybe before you open this you will have heard from me again. Anyhow, don’t forget me.
“Willy.
“P.S.—You see now that you’re bound to take the property.”