“Within the last five or six years?” Mr. Sturgeon added.
“No solicitor, sir,” the man answered at once, but with a gleam in his eyes which announced more to say.
“Go on, you have got something else in your mind. Let us hear what it is, and with no delay.”
“Master, sir,” said Harrison thus adjured, “he said to me more than once, ‘I’m a going to send for Sturgeon,’ he says. Beg your pardon, sir, for naming you like that, short.”
“Go on—go on.”
“And then he never did it, sir,” the man said.
“That’s not the question. Had he any interview, to your knowledge, with any solicitor here? Did he see anybody on business? Was there any signing of documents? I suppose you must have known?”
“I know everything, sir, as master did. I got him up, sir, and I put him to bed. There was never one in the house as did a thing for him but me. Miss Katherine she can tell as I never neglected him; never was out of the way when he wanted me; had no ’olidays, sir.” Harrison’s voice quivered as he gave this catalogue of his own perfections, as if with pure self-admiration and pity he might have broken down.
“It will be remembered in your favour,” said Mr. Sturgeon. “Now tell me precisely what happened.”
“Nothing at all happened, sir,” Harrison said.