'No? well, he intended locking him quietly into the suite of three
apartments, you know, at the far end of the old gallery, and giving him
full command of the mulberry garden by the little private stair, and
putting a good iron door to it; so that "my beloved brother, Julius, at
present afflicted in mind" (Lake quoted the words of the will, with an
unpleasant sneer), should have had his apartments and his pleasure
grounds quite to himself.'

'And would that arrangement of Mr. Wylder's have satisfied the conditions
of the will?' said the Town Clerk.

'I rather think, with proper precautions, it would. Mark Wylder was very
shrewd, and would not have run himself into a fix,' answered Lake. 'I
don't know any man shrewder; he is, certainly.'

And Lake looked at us, as he added these last words, in turn, with a
quick, suspicious glance, as if he had said something rash, and doubted
whether we had observed it.

After a little more talk, Lake and the Town Clerk resumed their
electioneering conference, and the lists of electors were passed under
their scrutiny, name by name, like slides under the miscroscope.

There is a great deal in nature, physical and moral, that had as well not
be ascertained. It is better to take things on trust, with something of
distance and indistinctness. What we gain in knowledge by scrutiny is
sometimes paid for in a ghastly sort of disgust. It is marvellous in a
small constituency of 300 average souls, what a queer moral result one of
these business-like and narrow investigations which precede an election