ight do, and a something which he might not
do, if he could only make up his mind. "Honesty is the best policy!"
"Honesty is the best policy!" He repeated the well-known words to
himself a thousand times, without, however, moving his lips or
forming a sound. There he sat, thinking it all out, trying to think
it out. There he sat, still trembling, still in an agony, for hour
after hour. At one time he had fully resolved to do that by which he
would have proved to himself his conviction that honesty is the best
policy, and then he sat doubting again--declaring to himself that
honesty itself did not require him to do this meditated deed. "Let
them find it," he said to himself at last, aloud. "Let them find it.
It is their business: not mine." But still he sat looking up at the
row of books opposite to him.

When it was considerably after midnight, he got up from his chair and
began to walk the room. As he did so, he wiped his brow continually
as though he were hot with the exertion, but keeping his eye still
fixed upon the books. He was urging himself, pressing upon himself
the expression of that honesty. Then at last he rushed at one of the
shelves, and, picking out a volume of Jeremy Taylor's works, threw it
upon the table. It was the volume on which the old Squire had been
engaged when he read the last sermon which was to prepare him for a
flight to a better world. He opened the book, and there between the
leaves was the last will and testament which his uncle had executed.

At that moment he heard a step in the hall and a hand on the door,
and as he did so with quick eager motion he hid the document under
the book.

"It is near two o'clock, Mr Henry," said the butler. "What are you
doing up so late?"

"I am only reading," said the heir.

"It is very late to be reading. You had better go to bed. He never
liked people to be a-reading at these contrairy hours. He liked folk
to be all a-bed."

The use of a dead man's authority, employed against him by one who
was, so to say, his own servant, struck even him as absurd and
improper. He felt that he must assert himself unless he meant to sink
lower and lower in the estimation of all those around him. "I shall
stay just as late as I please," he said. "Go away, and do not disturb
me any more."

"His will ought to be obeyed, and he not twenty-four hours under the
ground," said the butler.

"I should have stayed up just as long as I had pleased even had he
been here,"