"I knew it was so," he said loudly, and as he spoke he twice walked
the length of the room. "I knew it was so;--twenty years ago I
said the same. She forged the will. I ask you, as my lawyer, Mr.
Round,--did she not forge the will herself?"

"I shall answer no such question, Mr. Mason."

"Then by heavens I'll expose you. If I spend the whole value of the
estate in doing it I'll expose you, and have her punished yet. The
slippery villain! For twenty years she has robbed me."

"Mr. Mason, you are forgetting yourself in your passion," said Mr.
Furnival. "What you have to look for now is the recovery of the
property." But here Mr. Furnival showed that he had not made himself
master of Joseph Mason's character.

"No," shouted the angry man;--"no, by heaven. What I have first to
look to is her punishment, and that of those who have assisted her. I
knew she had done it,--and Dockwrath knew it. Had I trusted him, she
would now have been in gaol."

Mr. Furnival and Mr. Round were both desirous of having the matter
quietly arranged, and with this view were willing to put up with
much. The man had been ill used. When he declared for the fortieth
time that he had been robbed for twenty years, they could not deny
it. When with horrid oaths he swore that that will had been a
forgery, they could not contradict him. When he reviled the laws of
his country, which had done so much to facilitate the escape of a
criminal, they had no arguments to prove that he was wrong. They bore
with him in his rage, hoping that a sense of his own self-interest
might induce him to listen to reason. But it was all in vain. The
property was sweet, but that sweetness was tasteless when compared to
the sweetness of revenge.

"Nothing shall make me tamper with justice;--nothing," said he.

"But even if it were as you say, you cannot do anything to her," said
Round.

"I'll try," said Mason. "You have been my attorney, and what you know
in the matter you are bound to tell. And I'll make you tell, sir."

"Upon my word," said Round, "this is beyond bearing. Mr. Mason, I
must trouble you to walk out of my office." And then he rang the
bell. "Tell Mr. Mat I want to see him." But before that younger
partner had joined his father Joseph Mason had gone. "Mat," said the
old man, "I don't interfere with you in many things, but on this I
must insist. As long as my name is in the firm Mr. Joseph Mason of
Groby shall not be among our customers."

"The man'