ieve me, dear Admiral Bartram, affectionately yours,

"NOEL VANSTONE."

"Have you signed, sir?" asked Mrs. Lecount. "Let me look the letter
over, if you please, before we seal it up."

She read the letter carefully. In Noel Vanstone's close, cramped
handwriting, it filled two pages of letter-paper, and ended at the top
of the third page. Instead of using an envelope, Mrs. Lecount folded it,
neatly and securely, in the old-fashioned way. She lit the taper in the
ink-stand, and returned the letter to the writer.

"Seal it, Mr. Noel," she said, "with your own hand, and your own seal."
She extinguished the taper, and handed him the pen again. "Address
the letter, sir," she proceeded, "to _Admiral Bartram, St.
Crux-in-the-Marsh, Essex._ Now, add these words, and sign them, above
the address: _To be kept in your own possession, and to be opened by
yourself only, on the day of my death_--or 'Decease,' if you prefer
it--_Noel Vanstone._ Have you done? Let me look at it again. Quite right
in every particular. Accept my congratulations, sir. If your wife has
not plotted her last plot for the Combe-Raven money, it is not your
fault, Mr. Noel--and not mine!"

Finding his attention released by the completion of the letter, Noel
Vanstone reverted at once to purely personal considerations. "There is
my packing-up to be thought of now," he said. "I can't go away without
my warm things."

"Excuse me, sir," rejoined Mrs. Lecount, "there is the Will to be signed
first; and there must be two persons found to witness your signature."
She looked out of the front window, and saw the carriage waiting at the
door. "The coachman will do for one of the witnesses," she said. "He is
in respectable service at Dumfries, and he can be found if he happens
to be wanted. We must have one of your own servants, I suppose, for the
other witness. They are all de testable women; but the cook is the least
ill-looking of the three. Send for the cook, sir; while I go out and
call the coachman. When we have got our witnesses here, you have only to
speak to them in these words: 'I have a document here to sign, and I
wish you to write your names on it, as witnesses of my signature.'
Nothing more, Mr. Noel! Say those few words in your usual manner--and,
when the signing is over, I will see myself to your packing-up, and your
warm things."

She went to the front door, and summoned the coachman to the parlor.
On her return, she found the cook already in the