“Humph!” he observed, as he fastened a keen, curious glance upon the larger, “there is no key to that, but I’m going to know what it contains, all the same.”
Whereupon he sat down, drew it to him, and deliberately began to pick the lock.
CHAPTER VII.
MR. BREWSTER’S WILL.
After Gerald left Mr. Brewster, on Saturday afternoon, the banker—Allison also having retired—sat for a long time in deep thought, an anxious look on his thin face, a stern expression in his shrewd, gray eyes.
“It certainly looks bad,” he muttered; “somebody has evidently been meddling with my private accounts; but Gerald is not the rogue—he is true to the core. I never knew any one possessing a finer sense of honor. If I thought that Hubbard was up to any rascality—and I am sometimes inclined to think he is too sharp—I’d cut him loose without ceremony; and yet”—with a scowl of annoyance—“that might not be so easily done, for some of our transactions have become strangely mixed. Somehow, I have never had quite so much confidence in him since that day when he proposed for Allison. I—I really would like to break away from him before she gets through school next summer, for, of course, she will never want to marry him, and I am very sure I do not want him for a son-in-law.”
Again he dropped into profound thought, which was finally interrupted by the entrance of his attendant, with the light repast which constituted his supper.