When the boy reached the most fascinating age of childhood, and his
shouts of laughter ran through Stapleford House from end to end, the
remorse that oppressed Timothy Petrick knew no bounds. Of all
people in the world this Rupert was the one on whom he could have
wished the estates to devolve; yet Rupert, by Timothy's own
desperate strategy at the time of his birth, had been ousted from
all inheritance of them; and, since he did not mean to remarry, the
manors would pass to his brother and his brother's children, who
would be nothing to him, whose boasted pedigree on one side would be
nothing to his Rupert's.
Had he only left the first will of his grandfather alone!
His mind ran on the wills continually, both of which were in
existence, and the first, the cancelled one, in his own possession.
Night after night, when the servants were all abed, and the click of
safety locks sounded as loud as a crash, he looked at that first
will, and wished it had been the second and not the first.
The crisis came at last. One night, after having enjoyed the boy's
company for hours, he could no longer bear that his beloved Rupert
should be dispossessed, and he committed the felonious deed of
altering the date of the earlier will to a fortnight later, which
made its execution appear subsequent to the date of the second will
already proved. He then boldly propounded the first will as the
second.
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