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.

"What did it all really mean?" was the question I put to Miles when he
told me this story; for on that eventful afternoon I had only a very
vague notion of what had happened.

"What did it all mean?" was the reply; "why, simply this, that my uncle
was a forger. Probably he had never been guilty of such a crime
before, bu