ght be untrue to him, or in the
event of her marriage might fail to release his property,--or it might
be that the very money should be required to dower his daughter. Or
there might come troubles on him so great that even the certainty of a
future income would not enable him to bear them. Now, at this present
moment, his mind was tortured by great anxiety. Were he to resume this
property it would more than enable him to pay all that was due to the
Longestaffes. It would do that and tide him for a time over some other
difficulties. Now in regard to the Longestaffes themselves, he
certainly had no desire to depart from the rule which he had made for
himself, on their behalf. Were it necessary that a crash should come
they would be as good creditors as any other. But then he was
painfully alive to the fact that something beyond simple indebtedness
was involved in that transaction. He had with his own hand traced
Dolly Longestaffe's signature on the letter which he had found in old
Mr Longestaffe's drawer. He had found it in an envelope, addressed by
the elder Mr Longestaffe to Messrs. Slow and Bideawhile, and he had
himself posted this letter in a pillarbox near to his house. In the
execution of this manoeuvre, circumstances had greatly befriended him.
He had become the tenant of Mr Longestaffe's house, and at the same
time had only been the joint tenant of Mr Longestaffe's study,--so
that Mr Longestaffe's papers were almost in his very hands. To pick a
lock was with him an accomplishment long since learned. But his science
in that line did not go so far as to enable him to replace the bolt in
its receptacle. He had picked a lock, had found the letter prepared by
Mr Bideawhile with its accompanying envelope, and had then already
learned enough of the domestic circumstances of the Longestaffe family
to feel assured that unless he could assist the expedition of this
hitherto uncompleted letter by his own skill, the letter would never
reach its intended destination. In all this fortune had in some degree
befriended him. The circumstances being as they were it was hardly
possible that the forgery should be discovered. Even though the young
man were to swear that the signature was not his, even though the old
man were to swear that he had left that drawer properly locked with
the unsigned letter in it, still there could be no evidence. People
might think. People might speak. People might feel sure. And then a
crash would come.