which Lord Cairnforth seemed nervously anxious should be completed that
very day.

"For, suppose any thing should happen--if I died this night, for
instance! No, let what is done be done as soon as possible, and as
privately."

"You wish, then, the matter to be kept private?" asked Mr. Menteith.

"Yes."

So in the course of the next few hours the will was drawn up. It was
somewhat voluminous with sundry small legacies, no one being forgotten
whom the earl desired to benefit or thought needed his help; but the
bulk of his fortune he left unreservedly to Helen Cardross. Malcolm and
another servant were called in as witnesses, and the earl saying to them
with a cheerful smile "that he was making his will, but did not mean to
die a day the sooner," signed it with that feeble, uncertain signature
which yet had cost him years of pains to acquire, and never might have
been acquired at all but for his own perseverance and the unwearied
patience of Helen Cardross.

"She taught me to write, you know," said he to Mr. Menteith, as--the
witnesses being gone--he, with a half-amused look, regarded his own
autograph.

"You have used the results of her teaching well on her behalf today. It
is no trifle--a clear income of ten thousand a year; but she will
make a good use of it."