"Once more, for the benefit of our young friend, let me be more explicit," went on Mr. Denny. "His father makes a will, and then, apparently, revokes it by making another some eighteen months later. Now, a month before his death, instead of adding a codicil to the second will, he adds it to the first, which has become so much waste paper—a foolish thing, which no man in his senses would have thought of doing. We can only conclude," continued Mr. Denny, "that he had no recollection at all of having executed a second will."
The square jaw was rigid, and a dark flush overspread the visitor's temples.
"It was a mistake," he said thickly. "A slip of memory might cause any one to do a similar thing."
"Following up our first discovery," continued Mr. Denny, apparently paying no attention to this reply, "I was led to go a little further, and make a second. Remembering an account which the boys gave me of a chance meeting which they had with your old servant Tom Lance, I found him out, and had an interview with him at the barracks at Welmington. He seems a sharp fellow, and it appears had taught himself to read and write, and to read handwriting."
"Well, what about him?" asked Mr. Nicholas, in a tone of repressed anger.
"Although he would not confess it before, not even to our young friends, it appears that on the evening when you first found him alone in your parlour he was so far overcome by curiosity as to open your brass-bound box and look inside. There he found a sheet of foolscap covered with signatures, chiefly those of Mr. James Coverthorne, but also of the two other men whom we know now as the witnesses to this second will."
Mr. Nicholas muttered an oath, and brought down his fist heavily on the table. His eyes flashed, and the veins in his forehead swelled with pent-up emotion.
"Go on," he said at length; "come to the point, and let us know what you mean."
"What I mean, Mr. Coverthorne, is this," replied the other, in firm, icy tones: "for the sake of her dead husband and the son who may hand on the family name, Mrs. Coverthorne has asked me to give you this information, which I might otherwise have withheld until I had sent the law to knock at your door. To-morrow I shall commence to act on behalf of my clients. I am already in communication with your solicitor, who has this second will in his possession, and I think you will gain nothing by paying him a visit; in fact, you might be wasting valuable time by such a journey. You follow me, Mr. Coverthorne, I hope?—valuable time, sir, was what I said. Now, I think there is no reason for us to prolong this interview any further."
Muttering something below his breath, Mr. Nicholas Coverthorne rose from his chair and strode from the room. A few moments later he spurred out of the yard and galloped down the road. We heard the sound of his horse-hoofs die away in the distance; and so he passed for ever out of the knowledge of those whom he had sought to wrong.