When he saw him, man of the world as he was, he was impressed by the simplicity of a clergyman without a touch of the clerical, without any look of what he called sanctity—the look that comes upon a man cherishing the notion that he is intrusted with things more sacred than God will put in the hands of his other children. Such men, and they are many, one would like to lay for a time in the sheet of Peter’s vision, among the four-footed animals and creeping things, to learn that, as there is nothing common or unclean, so is there no class more sacred than another.

The baronet asked for a private interview, and told the parson he wanted to place in his keeping a certain paper, with the understanding that he would not open it for a year after his death, and would then act upon the directions contained in it.

“Provided always,” Wingfold stipulated, “that they require of me nothing unfit, impossible, or wrong.”

“I pledge myself that they require nothing unworthy of the cloth,” said sir Wilton.

“The cloth be hanged,” said Wingfold. “Do they require anything unworthy of a man—or, if you think the word means more—of a gentleman?”

“They do not,” answered the baronet.

“Then you must write another paper, stating that you have asked me to undertake this, but that you have given me no hint of the contents of the accompanying document. This second you must enclose with the first, sealing the envelope with your own seal.”

Sir Wilton at once consented, and immediately did as Wingfold desired.

“I’ve checkmated my lady at last!” he chuckled as he drove home. “She would have me the villain to disinherit my firstborn for her miserable brood! She shall find my other will, and think she’s safe! Then the thunderbolt! My lady’s money won’t be much for Percy the cad and Arthur the proper, not to mention Dorothy the cow, and Vixen the rat!”

He always spoke as if lady Ann’s children were none of his. Her ladyship had taught him to do so, for she always said, “My children!”

That night he slept with an easier mind. He had kept putting the deed off, regarding it as his abdication. Now that it was done he felt more comfortable.

Wingfold suspected in the paper some provision for Richard, but could imagine no reason for letting it lie unopened until a year should have passed from the baronet’s death. Troubling himself nothing, however, about what was not his business, he put the paper carefully aside—but where he would see it now and then, lest it should pass from his mind. With sir Wilton’s permission he told his wife what he had undertaken, that she might carry it out if he were prevented from doing so.