of value, sir," replied the lad.

"What is in them?" said my father.

"Only old letters, sir, written to my father, when I was in
Paris--nothing else."

"And who would know that?" said my father.

The boy went suddenly white.

"Precisely!" said my father. "You alone knew it, and when you
undertook to give this library the appearance of a pillaged room, you
unconsciously endowed your imaginary robber with the thing you knew
yourself. Why search for loot in drawers that contained only old
letters? So your imaginary robber reasoned, knowing what you knew. But a
real robber, having no such knowledge, would have ransacked them lest he
miss the things of value that he searched for."

He paused, his eyes on the lad, his voice deep and gentle.

"Where is the will?" he said.

The white in the boy's face changed to scarlet. He looked a moment
about him in a sort of terror; then he lifted his head and put back his
shoulders. He crossed the room to a bookcase, took down a volume, opened
it and brought out a sheet of folded foolscap. He stood up and faced my
father and the men about the room.

"This man," he said, indicating Gosford, "has no right to take all my
father had. He persuaded my father and was trusted by him. But I did not
trust him. My father saw this plan in a light that I did not see it,
but I did not oppose him. If he wished to use his fortune to help our
country in the thing which he thought he foresaw, I was willing for him
to do it.

"But," he cried, "somebody deceived me, and I will not believe that it
was my father. He told me all about this thing. I had not the health
to fight for our country, when the time came, he said, and as he had
no other son, our fortune must go to that purpose in our stead. But my
father was just. He said that a portion would be set aside for me, and
the remainder turned over to Mr. Gosford. But this will gives all to Mr.
Gosford and leaves me nothing!"

Then he came forward and put the paper in my father's hand. There was
silence except for the sharp voice of Mr. Gosford.

"I think there will be a criminal proceeding here!"

My father handed the paper to Lewis, who unfolded it and read it aloud.
It directed the estate of Peyton Marshall to be sold, the sum of fifty
thousand dollars paid to Anthony Gosford and the remainder to the son.

"But there will be no remainder," cried young Marshall. "My father's
estate is worth precisely that sum. He valued it very carefully, it