safe only by leaving the
book where it was, by giving no trace that he had ever been conscious
of the contents of the book.

And yet, if the document were left there, the book would certainly
divulge its dread secret at last. The day would come, might come, ah!
so quickly, on which the document would be found, and he would be
thrust out, penniless as far as any right to Llanfeare was concerned.
Some maid-servant might find it; some religious inmate of his house
who might come there in search of godly teaching! If he could only
bring himself to do something at once,--to declare that it was there,
so that he might avoid all these future miseries! But why had she
told him that she despised him, and why had the old man treated him
with such unexampled cruelty? So it went on with him for three or
four days, during which he still kept his place among the books.

There would be great delight in possessing Llanfeare, if he could
in very truth possess it. He would not live there. No; certainly
not that. Every tenant about the place had shown him that he was
despised. Their manner to him before the old Squire's death, their
faces as they had sat there during the ceremonies of the will, and
the fact that no one had been near him since the reading of the will,
had shown him that. He had not dared to go to church during the
Sunday; and though no one had spoken to him of his daily life, he
felt that tales were being told of him. He was sure that Mrs Griffith
had whispered about the place the fact of his constant residence
in one room, and that those who heard it would begin to say among
themselves that a practice so strange must be connected with the
missing will. No, he would not willingly live at Llanfeare. But if he
could let Llanfeare, were it but for a song, and enjoy the rents up
in London, how pleasant would that be! But then, had ever any man
such a sword of Damocles to hang over his head by a single hair, as
would be then hanging over his head were he to let Llanfeare or even
to leave the house, while that book with its inclosure was there
upon the shelves? It did seem to him, as he thought of it, that life
would be impossible to him in any room but that as long as the will
remained among the leaves of the volume.

Since the moment in which he had discovered the will he had felt the
necessity of dealing with the officials of the office in London at
which he had been employed. This was an establishment called the Sick
an