cle Sir Thomas had, in the closing years
of his life, shown unmistakable signs of brain-softening, and that a
symptom of his complaint had been his addiction to making a number of
wills--"two-thirds of 'em incoherent. Every two or three days he'd
compose a new one and send for Huskisson, his lawyer; and Huskisson,
after reading the rigmarole through, as solemn as a judge, would get
it solemnly witnessed and carry it off. He had three boxes full of
these lunacies when the old man died, and I'll wager he has not
destroyed 'em. Lawyers never destroy handwriting, however foolish.
It's against their principles."

"But," said Ruth, musing. "I understood that he died of a jail
fever, caught at the Assizes, where he was serving on--what do you
call it?"

"The Grand Jury."

"Well, how could he be serving on a Grand Jury if his head was
affected as you say?"

"You don't know England," he assured her. "Ten to one as a County
magnate he stickled for it, and the High Sheriff put him on the panel
to keep him amused."

"But a Grand Jury deals sometimes with matters of life and death,
does it not?"

"Often, but only in the first instance. It finds a true bill
usually, and sends the cause down to be tried by judge and jury, who
dispose of it. Actually the incompetence of a grand juror or two
doesn't count, if the scandal be not too glaring. . . . But I see
your drift. It will be a point for the other side, no matter how
lunatic the document, that after perpetrating it he was still thought
capable by the High Sheriff of his county."

"I do not know that the point struck me. I was wondering--" Here
she broke off. The thought, in fact, uppermost in her mind was that
he had not suggested her voyaging to England with him.

"It _is_ a point, anyway," he persisted. "But it won't stand against
Huskisson's documentary proof of lunacy. . . . You see, the greater
part of the property was entailed, and the poor old fool couldn't
touch it. But there's an unentailed estate in Devonshire--Downton by
name--worth about two thousand a year. By a will made in '41, when
his mind was admittedly sound, he left it to me with a charge upon it
of five hundred for Lady Caroline. By a second, made three years
later and duly witnessed, he left her Downton for her life; and with
that I chose not to quarrel, though I could have brought evidence
that he was unfit to make any will. I agreed with the infernal woman
to let things stand on th