"How very strange! What was the will like? I mean, what did it look like? I have a reason for asking you."
"It was a folded parchment. You saw your father's will, Annabel: it looked very much like that. Why do you ask?"
"Because I remember papa's bringing home a parchment exactly like the one you describe. It was an evening or two before he died: the evening before I and mamma went to Hastings. We left on Saturday, so it must have been Friday. Do you think it could be the missing will?"
"Oh no. I have known Mr. Brightman—though very rarely—take home deeds which required studying; but he was not likely to take home Sir Ralph Clavering's will. He made it himself, and knew every word it contained. Annabel, I did not intend to let out the name, but it will be safe with you."
"Perfectly so; as safe as with yourself. I will not repeat it, even to mamma."
"And what I shall do I cannot tell," I concluded, as I attended her down to the carriage. "I would give every shilling I possess to find it."
More work, and then the afternoon came to an end, my dinner came up, and I was at liberty to enjoy a little rest. I had taken to the front room as my sitting-room, and should speedily remove the desk and iron safe into the other, making that exclusively a business-room, and seeing clients in it. After dinner, the fire clear, my reading-lamp lighted, I took up the newspaper. But for habits of order and self-denying rules, I should never have attained to the position I enjoyed. One of those rules was, never to read the Times or any work of relaxation until my work was over for the day. I could then enjoy my paper and my cigar, and feel that I had earned both.
I took up the Times, and almost the very first paragraph my eye fell upon was the following:
"We hear that the convict ship Vengeance, after encountering stormy weather and contrary winds on her passage out, has been wrecked upon an uninhabited island. It is said that some of the convicts have escaped."
I started up almost as if I had been shot. Tom Heriot had gone out in the Vengeance: was he one of those who had escaped? If so, where was he? and what would be his ultimate fate?