BROUGHT TO BAY.
It was the last day of the old year, and though burning with curiosity
to know what discovery George and I had unwittingly made beyond the
whereabouts of the secret chamber, I forbore to ask any questions.
Remembering that after this date Miles and his mother could no longer
count on being left in undisputed possession of the whole estate, I did
not like to make any inquiries which might revive this painful subject;
so, with an effort, I resolved to possess my soul in patience, and wait
till either Miles or Mr. Denny should volunteer some explanation.
The latter had arrived at the house not long after breakfast, and
appeared to have come to spend the day. From some remarks which he
made, I understood that he had been in Welmington the day before, and
had travelled home through the night. Considering that he was an
elderly man, and that this was the middle of winter, it struck me that
whatever business he had had to transact must have been both important
and urgent. In some indefinable manner the impression grew in my mind
that something was brewing--whether trouble or otherwise I could not
say; but there was a subdued air of excitement about the house, in
which Miles, his mother, and the lawyer all seemed to share. Though I
cannot but own that it aroused my curiosity, I stuck to my former
determination to mind my own business, and not try to poke my nose into
matters in which I had no concern.
At dinner even Mr. Denny, usually so sharp and alert, seemed at times a
trifle preoccupied; while Mrs. Coverthorne was evidently in a state of
nervous tension. She made a forced attempt to keep up the
conversation, but it was plain that she was merely talking for the sake
of talking, and that her thoughts were far from the subject of her
remarks. Still, whatever might have been weighing on her mind, her
look seemed to denote a change from when I had seen her in the summer:
it was as though some burden of care had been recently lifted from her
shoulders.
When the table had been cleared, we still sat on in the oak-panelled
parlour--Mr. Denny thoughtfully sipping his wine, Miles notching a
small fragment of firewood with his pocket-knife, and his mother making
a pretence to sew, though at times I saw her hand shake so that she
could not possibly direct her needle. As no one else made a move, I,
too, remained in the room, gazing at the burning logs in the big open
hearth.
At length there came a sound of horses' hoofs in the yard, and I saw
Mrs. Coverthorne and Mr. Denny exchange a quick glance; then, a few
minutes later, one of the maids knocked at the door and announced Mr.
Nicholas Coverthorne.
Miles's mother rose to her feet, letting her work drop unheeded to the
floor.
"Come, Sylvester," she said; "Mr. Denny has some private business to
transact, and we will go into another room."
In the passage we met Mr. Coverthorne. He paused as though about to
speak, but his sister-in-law passed him with a slight inclination of
her head. I saw the man's face in the half-light of the passage--grim,
cold, forbidding; and so the recollection of it has always remained in
my mind. He passed on with a measured stride, entered the parlour, and
closed the door behind him.
It was not until some years later that I heard from the lips of my
friend an exact account of the interview which followed; but so vividly
was every detail of it impressed on Miles's mind that in after life he
could recall it as though it had been an event of yesterday.
Mr. Denny and the visitor exchanged a formal salutation, and the latter
took a chair by the side of the table. A man of iron will and
unrelenting purpose, tall and heavily built, the little dried-up lawyer
seemed no match for such an adversary; but he was evidently prepared
for the fray, and began by politely pushing the decanter and a glass
towards his opponent. Mr. Nicholas, however, declined the proffered
refreshment with a somewhat peremptory wave of his hand.
"Your time, Mr. Coverthorne, I know is valuable," began the lawyer,
"and therefore I know you will thank me to come at once to business. I
requested you to meet me here to ask you once more whether you were
finally determined to assert your claim to half the Coverthorne
estate--a claim based, of course, on the will made early in the present
year, under very extraordinary circumstances, by your brother James?"
An angry glint came into the visitor's cold gray eyes, but he was too
strong a man to give way to any outburst of passion.
"I thought we had come to a clear and definite understanding on that
point long ago," he replied. "If that is all you have to say, you have
brought me here for nothing. Moreover, I strongly resent your
suggestion that the will was made under any 'extraordinary
circumstances.' For reasons of his own, my late brother chose to keep
the matter for the time being from the knowledge of his family; but the
will was executed in a perfectly proper and legal manner, as you
yourself must know, having seen the document with your own eyes."
"This division of the property would necessitate your sister-in-law and
her son leaving Coverthorne," said Mr. Denny.
"I don't necessarily admit that," returned the other. "But as I've
told you before, sir, other people have rights to be considered besides
my brother's family. He himself saw that I had been done out of mine
for many years; and though neither he nor I then thought that I should
ever benefit by this act of restitution, yet he considered it just and
necessary, if for nothing more than as an acknowledgment that I had not
been fairly dealt with, and that I had his sympathy. I have already
suggested to Mrs. Coverthorne that, as this house is much too large for
her and Miles, she should give it up and take a smaller one in town,
where they would see more people and make new friends."
"Still," said Mr. Denny, "it is very hard for the lad, as his father's
heir, to have to give up the old house, which has been in the family
for so many generations, containing, as it does, the rooms in which his
great-grandparents lived and died--ay, further back still. I repeat,
it would be hard for him to give up a home so rich in old traditions
and associations."
"Merely a matter of sentiment," answered Mr. Nicholas shortly. "If the
old place were mine, I'd sell it to-morrow if I were offered a good
enough price."
"There's that secret place about which so many legends have clustered,"
went on the solicitor musingly, "and which you once gave us to
understand was simply a hole in the chimney which had been built up in
your father's time. I suppose you heard how it was discovered?"
The visitor nodded.
Mr. Denny took another sip at his port, set down the glass, and sat up
straighter in his chair. There was something in his action suggestive
of a person who suddenly prepares to attack after having stood for some
time merely on the defensive.
"On the same day that the secret chamber was found," he began, "we made
another discovery, to which I should now like to call your attention.
In the underground chamber was an iron box, which on being opened was
found to contain a quantity of papers. Among them was your brother's
will, which since his death we had not been able to discover. He went
away from home some little time ago at rather short notice, and
probably deposited the documents in the hiding-place for safe-keeping."
"You mean the will which he made some three years ago?" said Mr.
Nicholas.
"Exactly," answered Mr. Denny. In his quick, jerky movements he was
always very like a bird, but now he was watching the other man with the
keen eyes of a hawk.
"Well?" queried the visitor.
"On examination," continued the lawyer, "I found that, unknown to me,
he had added a codicil. Pardon me if I make this quite clear for the
benefit of our young friend," he continued, turning to Miles. "A
codicil is an addition--postscript, as it were--which a person adds to
his original will, and it has to be duly signed and witnessed in the
same way as the will itself. In this case your father wished a small
sum of money to be given to an old servant, and to ensure this being
done he added the codicil of which I am speaking."
Mr. Nicholas was listening intently, but did not seem to understand at
what the lawyer was driving.
"Well, what of that?" he demanded.
"The point is," said Mr. Denny quite calmly, "that this codicil was
dated not more than a month before your brother's death."
A deep hush fell upon the room--so deep that the ticking of the old
clock in the corner seemed to have become almost as loud as the
knocking of a hammer. Mr. Nicholas sat like a graven image, merely
drumming softly on the table with the tips of his fingers, while his
and Mr. Denny's gaze remained fixed as though each had determined to
stare the other out of countenance.
"Once more, for the benefit of our young friend, let me be more
explicit," went on Mr. Denny. "His father makes a will, and then,
apparently, revokes it by making another some eighteen months later.
Now, a month before his death, instead of adding a codicil to the
second will, he adds it to the first, which has become so much waste
paper--a foolish thing, which no man in his senses would have thought
of doing. We can only conclude," continued Mr. Denny, "that he had no
recollection at all of having executed a second will."
The square jaw was rigid, and a dark flush overspread the visitor's
temples.
"It was a mistake," he said thickly. "A slip of memory might cause any
one to do a similar thing."
"Following up our first discovery," continued Mr. Denny, apparently
paying no attention to this reply, "I was led to go a little further,
and make a second. Remembering an account which the boys gave me of a
chance meeting which they had with your old servant Tom Lance, I found
him out, and had an interview with him at the barracks at Welmington.
He seems a sharp fellow, and it appears had taught himself to read and
write, and to read handwriting."
"Well, what about him?" asked Mr. Nicholas, in a tone of repressed
anger.
"Although he would not confess it before, not even to our young
friends, it appears that on the evening when you first found him alone
in your parlour he was so far overcome by curiosity as to open your
brass-bound box and look inside. There he found a sheet of foolscap
covered with signatures, chiefly those of Mr. James Coverthorne, but
also of the two other men whom we know now as the witnesses to this
second will."
Mr. Nicholas muttered an oath, and brought down his fist heavily on the
table. His eyes flashed, and the veins in his forehead swelled with
pent-up emotion.
"Go on," he said at length; "come to the point, and let us know what
you mean."
"What I mean, Mr. Coverthorne, is this," replied the other, in firm,
icy tones: "for the sake of her dead husband and the son who may hand
on the family name, Mrs. Coverthorne has asked me to give you this
information, which I might otherwise have withheld until I had sent the
law to knock at your door. To-morrow I shall commence to act on behalf
of my clients. I am already in communication with your solicitor, who
has this second will in his possession, and I think you will gain
nothing by paying him a visit; in fact, you might be wasting valuable
time by such a journey. You follow me, Mr. Coverthorne, I
hope?--valuable time, sir, was what I said. Now, I think there is no
reason for us to prolong this interview any further."
Muttering something below his breath, Mr. Nicholas Coverthorne rose
from his chair and strode from the room. A few moments later he
spurred out of the yard and galloped down the road. We heard the sound
of his horse-hoofs die away in the distance; and so he passed for ever
out of the knowledge of those whom he had sought to wrong.
"What did it all really mean?" was the question I put to Miles when he
told me this story; for on that eventful afternoon I had only a very
vague notion of what had happened.
"What did it all mean?" was the reply; "why, simply this, that my uncle
was a forger. Probably he had never been guilty of such a crime
before, but the fact remains that he forged that will from beginning to
end, and did it so well that even Mr. Denny could detect no flaw,
either in the text or in the signatures. He must have possessed more
skill as a penman than any one imagined. At first we thought some
expert criminal must have helped him, but the fact of Tom Lance
discovering that sheet of paper covered with signatures in his desk
seems to prove that he did it himself. For the sake of the family my
mother did not wish him to be arrested, so gave him the opportunity to
escape--a chance of which he had the good sense to avail himself, for
he went off that night, and we never saw or heard anything of him
again. It turned out that he was deep in debt. The house and land at
Stonebank were heavily mortgaged, and as soon as it was known that he
was gone, everything was seized by the creditors. He was a thoroughly
bad man, and if it hadn't been for your adventure, Sylvester, he'd have
turned my mother and myself out of doors before he'd done with us.
Yes," insisted my old friend, seeing me about to interrupt, "we shall
always consider we owe it to you and George Woodley that we are still
living on in the old house. If you hadn't caused me to find the secret
place, Mr. Denny would never have seen that codicil to my father's will
which made him feel certain that the other was a forgery. It was that
discovery, coupled with what I had already told him, that induced him
to go and hunt up Tom Lance; and the two things together were enough to
prove my uncle's guilt. Well, 'it's an ill wind that blows nobody
good,' runs the old saying, and certainly we have cause to be thankful
for the outcome of your eventful journey with the coach-load of
convicts."
* * * * *
Though the "secret place" has long ago been bricked up, the old house
at Coverthorne remains much the same as it appeared when I first saw
it; but a fresh generation of boys and girls have sprung up to enliven
it with their laughter and frolics, and to this merry audience, around
the self-same hearth from under which I was drawn up half dead that
winter morning, I have told repeatedly the story of that strange
adventure.
George Woodley lived to a hale and peaceful old age. He did well at
his farming, and was content to hear from a distance the familiar toot
of the horn on which he himself had performed for so many years. He
was the same bright, good-hearted fellow to the end of his days, but he
could never quite forgive the convicts for having thrown the old _True
Blue_ over the cliff.
"The cold-blooded villains!" he would exclaim. "If they'd left her in
a field or shoved her into that dry pit, I wouldn't have minded; but to
smash her on the rocks--'twas as bad as murder! Well, there! they met
their punishment; and for my part I know I came out of it with a very
handsome reward from Master Miles, and what's more, a good yarn to tell
the boys."
THE END.
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literature."--_Times_.
"A capital first book of English Literature for children, produced in
handsome form, with excellent print, and having the advantage of twenty
first-rate coloured illustrations by J. R. Skelton."--_Guardian_.