helf. That, you will say,
is a conclusion too exact for man to reach without anything in the
shape of absolute evidence."

"I do not say so; but then as yet I hardly know the process by which
that belief has been reached."

"But I say so;--I say that is too exact. There is more of imagination
in it than of true deduction. I certainly should not recommend
another person to proceed far on such reasoning. You see it has
been in this way." Then he explained to his brother attorney the
process of little circumstances by which he had arrived at his own
opinion;--the dislike of the man to leave the house, his clinging
to one room, his manifest possession of a secret as evinced by his
conversations with Farmer Griffith, his continual dread of something,
his very clinging to Llanfeare as a residence which would not have
been the case had he destroyed the will, his exaggerated fear of the
coming cross-examination, his ready assertion that he had destroyed
nothing and hidden nothing,--but his failure to reply when he was
asked whether he was aware of any such concealment. Then the fact
that the books had not been searched themselves, that the old Squire
had never personally used the room, but had used a book or one or two
books which had been taken from it; that these books had been volumes
which had certainly been close to him in those days when the lost
will was being written. All these and other little details known to
the reader made the process by which Mr Apjohn had arrived at the
conclusion which he now endeavoured to explain to Mr Brodrick.

"I grant that the chain is slight," said Mr Apjohn, "so slight that a
feather may break it. The strongest point in it all was the look on
the man's face when I asked him the last question. Now I have told
you everything, and you must decide what we ought to do."

But Mr Brodrick was a man endowed with lesser gifts than those of the
other attorney. In such a matter Mr Apjohn was sure to lead. "What do
you think yourself?"

"I would propose that we, you and I, should go together over to
Llanfeare to-morrow and ask him to allow us to make what further
search we may please about the house. If he permitted this--"

"But would he?"

"I think he would. I am not at all sure but what he would wish to
have the will found. If he did, we could begin and go through every
book in the library. We would begin with the sermons, and soon know
whether it be as I have suggested."

"But if he re