afterwards
that it was but an excuse: that Roy made it a pretext for the purpose of
obtaining an interview. Though why, or wherefore, or what he gained by
it, Lionel could not imagine. Roy merely wanted to know if he might be
allowed to put a fresh paper on the walls of one of his two upper rooms.
He'd get the paper at his own cost, and hang it at his own leisure, if
Mr. Verner had no objection.

"Of course I can have no objection to it," replied Lionel. "You need not
have lost an afternoon's work, Roy, to come here to inquire that. You
might have asked me when I saw you by the brick-field this morning. In
fact, there was no necessity to mention it at all."

"So I might, sir. But it didn't come into my mind at the moment to do
so. It's poor Luke's room, and the missis, she goes on continual about
the state it's in, if he should come home. The paper's all hanging off
it in patches, sir, as big as my two hands. It have got damp through not
being used."

"If it is in that state, and you like to find the time to hang the
paper, you may purchase it at my cost," said Lionel, who was of too just
a nature to be a hard landlord.

"Thank ye, sir," replied Roy, ducking his head. "It's well for us, as I
often says, that you be our master at last, instead of the Mr.
Massingbirds."

"There was a time when you did not think so, Roy, if my memory serves me
rightly," was the rebuke of Lionel.

"Ah, sir, there's a old saying, 'Live and learn.' That was in the days
when I thought you'd be a over strict master; we have got to know better
now, taught from experience. It was a lucky day for the Verner Pride
estate when that lost codicil was brought to light! The Mr. Massingbirds
be dead, it's true, but there's no knowing what might have happened; the
law's full of quips and turns. With the codicil found, you can hold your
own again' the world."

"Who told you anything about the codicil being found?" demanded Lionel.

"Why, sir, it was the talk of the place just about the time we heard of
Mr. Fred Massingbird's death. Folks said, whether he had died, or
whether he had not, you'd have come in all the same. T'other day, too, I
was talking of it to Lawyer Matiss, and he said what a good thing it
was, that that there codicil was found."

Lionel knew that a report of the turning up of the codicil had travelled
to Deerham. It had never been contradicted. But he wondered to hear Roy
say that Matiss had spoken of it. Matiss, himself, Tynn