am inclined to think they will
make us a hard fight, but I am confident that we will win in the
end. The main point is this: we must be prepared to meet them on
whatever ground they may take, and, after hearing their side and
the proof they set up, we can easily determine our line of defence."

"To the deuce with your line of defence! I tell you, Whitney, there
is just one point to be maintained, and, by my soul, it shall be
maintained at any cost!" and the speaker emphasized his words by
bringing his clinched hand down upon a table beside him with
terrific force "that point is this: Harold Scott Mainwaring never
had a living, lawful son; no such person exists, or ever has
existed on the face of the earth, and I can prove what I say."

"Have you absolute proof of that?" Mr. Whitney inquired, quickly.

"I have," replied Ralph Mainwaring, triumphantly, while his cold,
calculating gray eyes glittered like burnished steel. "If any man
thinks I have been asleep for the past twenty-one years, he is
deucedly mistaken. Mr. Whitney, since the day of that boy's birth,"
pointing to his son, "I have had but one fixed resolve, which has
been paramount to everything else, to which everything else has
had to subserve,--the Mainwaring estate with its millions should
one day be his. Not a day has passed in which this was not
uppermost in my mind; not a day in which I have not scanned the
horizon in every direction to detect the least shadow likely to
intervene between me and the attainment of the dearest object of
my life. When the news of Harold Mainwaring's death reached
England, in order to guard against the possibility of a claim ever
being asserted in that direction, I set myself at once to the task
of finding for a certainty whether or not he had left any issue.
I never rested day or night until, after infinite labor and pains,
I had secured the certificate of the attendant physician to the
effect that the only child of Harold Mainwaring died within an
hour from its birth."

"Have you that certificate now?" inquired the attorney.

"Not here; it is among my private papers at home."

"Cable for it at once; with the death of Harold Mainwaring's child
fully established, the will would cut no figure, one way or another."

"That will," said Ralph Mainwaring, fiercely, turning upon Mr.
Whitney with an expression which the latter had never seen, "let me
tell you, will cut no figure one way or another in any event. That
wi