don't--then, Harold, our time
will have come: you will have your longed-for chance of trying me.'

'That won't do me much good,' he answered, 'if I have to wait fourteen
years for you--at Portland.'

[Illustration: THE CROSS-EYED Q.C. BEGGED HIM TO BE VERY CAREFUL.]

Next morning, in court, I heard Harold's cross-examination. He described
exactly where he had found the contested will in his uncle's escritoire.
The cross-eyed Q.C., a heavy man with bloated features and a bulbous
nose, begged him, with one fat uplifted forefinger, to be very careful.
How did he know where to look for it?

'Because I knew the house well: I knew where my uncle was likely to keep
his valuables.'

'Oh, indeed; _not_ because you had put it there?'

The court rang with laughter. My face grew crimson.

After an hour or two of fencing, Harold was dismissed. He stood down,
baffled. Counsel recalled Lord Southminster.

The pea-green young man, stepping briskly up, gazed about him,
open-mouthed, with a vacant stare. The look of cunning on his face was
carefully suppressed. He wore, on the contrary, an air of injured
innocence combined with an eye-glass.

'_You_ did not put this will in the drawer where Mr. Tillington found
it, did you?' counsel asked.

The pea-green young man laughed. 'No, I certainly didn't put it theah.
My cousin Harold was man in possession. He took jolly good care _I_
didn't come neah the premises.'

'Do you think you could forge a will if you tried?'

Lord Southminster laughed. 'No, I don't,' he answered, with a
well-assumed _naivete_. 'That's just the difference between us, don't
yah know. _I'm_ what they call a fool, and my cousin Harold's a precious
clevah fellah.'

There was another loud laugh.

'That's not evidence,' the judge observed, severely.

It was not. But it told far more than much that was. It told strongly
against Harold.

'Besides,' Lord Southminster continued, with engaging frankness, 'if I
forged a will at all, I'd take jolly good care to forge it in my own
favah.'

My turn came next. Our counsel handed me the incriminated will. 'Did you
draw up this document?' he asked.

I looked at it closely. The paper bore our Florentine water-mark, and
was written with a Spread-Eagle. 'I type-wrote it,' I answered, gazing
at it with care to make sure I recognised it.

Our counsel's business was to uphold the will, not to cast aspersions
upon it. He was evidently annoyed at my close examination. '