"I don't see, Kavanagh, what you can gain by bringing forward this absurd statement. Of course we all imagined that the mysterious business upon which you saw my deceased uncle the last evening of his life was in some way connected with making his will; and Mr. Smith, Mr. Walker, and myself searched through his papers with the utmost care, and with this idea in our minds; but no will, no codicil, no letter, nor memorandum of later date than the one just read could anywhere be found. Knowing what an eccentric character he was, we came to the conclusion that, if any will posterior to this were made, he had destroyed it immediately afterward.--Is this not so?" he turned to the two lawyers.

"It is so," answered Walker, for self and partner. "We made the minutest investigation, and were all three together when the seals were removed which had been placed on everything by the police in charge of the house. Nothing could have been tampered with."

I was fairly baffled, and stood considering what was the next best thing to do, when an old gray-headed man stepped forward and said that, if he might suggest, it would be satisfactory to hear in what particulars the deed I had drawn up differed from the one just made known.

"Yes," said Wilmot, with something like a sneer; "let us hear what were the contents of this will which you say you drew up."

"Wilmot," I answered, "the one whom that will, to my mind, most affected, for reasons which will presently be obvious to all who listen to me now, was the only one who loved the old man in life whose remains we have just followed to the grave--the only one who, I know, mourns his death with all the sincerity of his true and noble heart. In his presence I would never publicly have dragged forward a history which is full of sin, of sorrow, of remorse. But he lies in a felon's cell, charged, through a dark mysterious combination of events, and I firmly believe a deeply-laid scheme to work his ruin, with a felon's crime. In his interest therefore, first of all, I must speak. There is also that of another concerned, who comes before most of those present as a complete stranger; whether to all I know not.--Gentlemen, I, like you, believed until this day week that Gilbert Thorneley died childless and a bachelor. [{744}] Five-and twenty years ago he married a young and beautiful girl, an orphan, but possessed of an immense fortune. He married her for her money. It was a joyless marriage, without love, without happiness. One son was born to them, and shortly after the young wife died. The boy grew up an idiot, hated, loathed by his father, who sent him far away from his sight, and who for more than fifteen years before he died never saw his child's face. Remorse at last seems to have surged up in his heart, and he took a resolution to make what reparation he could for his past neglect. This is all which the deceased, Mr. Thorneley, confided to me in plain words; at the rest I can only darkly guess; but that much more might have been told which never passed his lips, that some terrible secret of the past remains still unrevealed, I am bound to say I feel convinced from the manner in which that little was revealed to me. Gentlemen, the will which I executed last Tuesday evening, and saw witnessed by the two servants now present, after bequeathing £10,000 a year to his nephew, Hugh Atherton, left the whole and entire of Gilbert Thorneley's property, landed, personal, and in the funds, to his idiot son, Francis Gilbert Thorneley, now living; and constituted Hugh Atherton as sole guardian of his cousin. With the exception of the same small legacies to the domestics of his household, no other bequest whatever was made; no other name mentioned. This will was executed as a tardy reparation for some wrong done to his dead wife."

There was the sound of a dull, heavy fall, and a cry from one of the women in the room. Mrs. Haag, the housekeeper, had fainted away.

CHAPTER VIII.

INSPECTOR KEENE SEES DAYLIGHT AT LAST.

"And pray, may I ask who was left executor in this wonderful will, since that item seems to have been omitted from an otherwise well-concocted story?" said Mr. Walker, as soon as the housekeeper had been carried out of the room, and order restored.

"Mr. Atherton and myself were named executors."