CHAPTER XIV

TURNING THE TABLES

ARTHUR went to the police court in good time the next morning, hoping to be able to talk to Mr. Andrews before he was called to stand before the magistrate. He was not satisfied with the lawyer's suggestion that nothing should be said about the post office order and missing letter. While the matter was about, he wanted the whole of it cleared up, if such a thing was possible.

But he found that Mr. Andrews was engaged in talking the affair over with Lady Mary's solicitor, for nothing less than an entire withdrawal of the charge against Arthur, and an ample apology for having made the charge, would satisfy Mr. Andrews.

At length Arthur managed to gain admission to the room where the lawyer's conference was being held.

"Good-morning, my lad!" said his friend, turning his heated face to meet him. He had just got his opponent to agree to his demands, and was flushed with the sense of victory over a keener man than himself.

"It's all right, Mr. Murray," he said in a whisper. "The proceedings will be very formal to-day. Mr. Simmons is well enough to come and see to things himself, and we shall soon have it over."

"But I hope you will speak about the missing letter and post office order. Let us get it all cleared up while we are about it. You know, Adrian said, 'If he had the cheque, I had the letter', and that was what he must have meant—that I had stolen the post office order for three pounds, while he had only two out of the cheque. He may have thought he had a right to take that, as he wanted it and it was his mother's money," said Arthur, by way of excuse for his cousin.

"Well, that may be so, but it does not excuse Lady Mary from charging you with stealing the cheque. I will mention the postal order, and clear your character while we are about it."

So when Arthur was called to stand in the dock once more, it was only to hear Mr. Simmons state that by desire of Lady Mary, he wished to withdraw the charge and all imputation upon the character of Mr. Murray, and also to offer an apology for the distress and inconvenience he had suffered through this charge being made against him.

Then Mr. Andrews had a word to say. In accepting the apology, and consenting to the withdrawal without calling his witnesses, who could prove Mr. Murray's innocence of all complicity in this theft, he had to say that the matter was not wholly cleared up, as the letter containing the post office order was still unaccounted for. But it was reasonable to suppose that the person who took the cheque, and bought the post office order for three pounds, afterwards repented this step, and deciding that he had a right to the use of all the money, did not post the letter as he had stated, but converted it to his own use, as they knew now that he owed several debts in the town.

"Of course the post office order can be traced, and we shall endeavour to find out who changed it, if it has been changed, but it will not be found that Mr. Arthur Murray had anything to do with it," concluded the lawyer.

This was the way in which Mr. Andrews turned the tables on Lady Mary, for the magistrate admitted in his speech that nothing was more likely than that the suggestion Mr. Andrews had made was the true solution of the mystery concerning the disappearance of the letter. He then assured Arthur that he left the court without the slightest stain upon his character, and congratulated him on being able to prove his innocence of all share in the theft.

No names were mentioned, and Mr. Simmons could not say a word against the letter being spoken of, but it annoyed him exceedingly, for he had seen Lady Mary, and she had expressed her opinion that Arthur could still be charged with stealing the letter and post office order. She was not in court, or she might have made the charge there and then, and declared, what in truth her blind prejudice had made her believe, that Arthur had prompted her son to cash the cheque, and had shared in the proceeds of both cheque and post office order, quite ignoring the fact that a post office order must be signed by the receiver of the money. She would never have believed that her darling had touched it, if she had not received a telegram from her brother, more incisive than polite, telling her not to be a fool and stir up dirty water, before she received a letter from him.

If this telegram had reached her ladyship a few hours earlier, Arthur would not have been arrested, but by the time Mr. Simmons received it, Arthur was in the cells, and Mr. Andrews was hunting up the necessary evidence to prove his innocence, which so seriously compromised Adrian.

The fact was, when Adrian rushed off to London to get out of the way, he found that his uncle asked so many questions as to the reason for his sudden arrival that he had to make a clean breast of the whole matter, and admit that he had cashed the cheque to pay a debt for which he was being pressed. Upon hearing this, Lord Lismore telegraphed to his sister, and wrote, saying that the culprit was Adrian himself, but that she was to blame for keeping the lad idling at home when he ought to be preparing himself for some useful life.

"It will never do for him to come back to that place, where he seems by his own account to have got into bad company, but you must spend a little of the money upon him now, that you have been hoarding. It is all very well to try and leave the lad a fortune, but you would be showing him more true kindness, if you spent something in helping him to make his own, or at least putting him in the way of earning his living decently as honourable men do. The best thing you can do for the lad is to let him go into the army. He says he would like that better than anything else, and so it would be better to send him to an establishment where they prepare young men for passing the necessary examinations."

"Of course you will have to spend some money, but you may as well do it in making him a useful man as let him waste it in loafing around billiard saloons, which seems to be all he has done lately."

Lady Mary went almost frantic as she read this letter, but she knew that what her brother said was true, and that she would have to give up what had of late years become the dream of her life, and let Arthur Murray succeed to his inheritance just when it was likely to become profitable.

The letter she received from Mr. Simmons made her the more willing to do this, for how could she prove that Adrian did not appropriate the whole of the proceeds of the cheque for his own use. One thing was certain, he could never show his face in Fairmead again, now that this had all been made public. And so she wrote to her brother, asking him to make the necessary arrangements for Adrian to be placed under the care of a suitable instructor to fit him for entering the army.

This was a fortunate thing for the lad, or he would inevitably have drifted from bad to worse, and from robbing his mother, he might have proceeded to rob others, and thus have entered upon a career of crime instead of having the chance to live a useful life.

Mr. Andrews was soon informed that the necessary deeds and securities would be handed over to him by Mr. Simmons at an early date, and the money he held to redeem them would be accepted by Lady Mary without further dispute.

The lawyer smiled at this, but he was willing to let it pass without comment, for he had little doubt that it had cost Lady Mary a good deal of pain to give up her plans for gaining all the Murray estate.

When Lady Mary wrote to her son, it was a reproachful letter, and accused him of robbing her of the whole cheque, but to this he quickly sent a reply, saying that he certainly did post the letter to Brading's, and that Arthur certainly must have had this post office order.

About the time when Lady Mary got this letter from Adrian, Mrs. Murray's little servant came to the dining-room one evening with a request. "Please, Miss Molly, my cousin has come to see me," she announced; "can I ask her into the kitchen for a bit?"

"Oh, certainly!" answered Molly.

And being of a curious turn of mind, she thought she would go into the kitchen about an hour later and see what sort of a person this cousin was.

She saw a girl about Alice's own age sitting at the kitchen table, and the girls had some dirty-looking papers spread out before them.

"Let me tell Miss Molly all about it," whispered Alice as she went into the room.

Molly could not help overhearing what was said, and, stopping at the table, she said: "Is it something you want to ask me, Alice?"

The cousin nodded, but seemed shy of speaking, and so she nudged Alice and nodded by way of telling her to explain matters.

"My cousin here has found a big lump of money," said Alice, plunging at once into the tale. "It's such a big lump that she don't know what to do with it, and so she has come to show it to me and ask me about it."

"Is it in bank-notes?" asked Molly, as she saw how carefully the stranger kept the papers before her covered with her hands.

Alice shook her head dubiously. "They're paper, sure enough," she said, "or Hester wouldn't have found them."

"'Tain't often any of us get such a slice of luck as this," commenced the stranger, "though I has tons of paper through my hands every week."

Molly grew more curious. "Where did you find this treasure trove?" she asked.

But the girl shook her head. She did not understand what was said. "There's only one place I could find it—at the mill," she said.

"My cousin is a paper girl, Miss Molly. She is one of the sorters at Robinson's mill, and it was among the waste that she found this."

"It was a fair find," the stranger hastened to explain.

"Yes, ma'am, Hester wouldn't be doing no shabby tricks to get hold of it," commented Alice.

"Yes, it's just as fair as can be, and I don't mean to be done out of it. The forewoman might think she ought to have her share, if she knowed what I'd got, so I just put it in my pocket and brought it up to ask Alice about it."

"Of course, if you could find the owner, you would take it to him?" said Molly.

The girl opened her eyes. Evidently she had never thought of doing that, and her eyes fell when Molly said that this was the only right and straightforward thing she could do.

"What would he give me for it?" asked the girl.

"I really cannot say," replied Molly.

"We always used to say findings keepings," said Alice, as though this was the law that might be expected to apply to the case they were discussing.

But Molly shook her head. "That would not be honest," she remarked, "and I am sure you are not a dishonest girl."

"No, ma'am, but I don't want to be cheated out of my fair find."

"Of course not! What you want to do is to find out who the rightful owner is, and hand it to him. You know it may have caused a great deal of trouble to somebody, the loss of this money, I mean, and so if we could find out who ought to have it, I am sure they would give you something for it."

As Molly was speaking, the girl slowly withdrew her hands, and pushed the dirty-looking papers towards her. "Perhaps you can find out what I ought to do with them," she said rather sullenly.

Molly started, and an eager look came into her face the moment her eyes fell upon the soiled envelope, for she recognized at once the coronet used by Lady Mary on all her stationery. She almost seized the papers as the girl pushed them towards her. There could be no doubt that this was the missing letter. The address on the envelope and the note inside were in her aunt's handwriting, and there was a post office order in it for three pounds.

She almost trembled with excitement as she held these in her fingers, but she had to keep calm and reserved before the girls, and so she carefully looked at all the papers before she ventured to speak, for fear she should betray her anxiety by the tremor in her voice.

At last she said, "I can tell you now exactly what you must do with this letter and the post office order inside. They were sent by a lady to the tailoring department of Brading's, the large stores in the London Road. You must take it there and tell them where you found it."

But the girl shook her head. "'Tain't likely they'll believe me; they'll just say I stole it."

"No, no; you do not look like a girl who would steal," said Molly. And this was true, although if she had committed the theft, she could scarcely look more frightened than she did at Molly's proposal.

"I wouldn't mind you taking 'em, miss. You'd know what to say to 'em, but I ain't used to talking to gents."

Molly was puzzled, but she kept the papers in her hand, and at last she thought of a way out of the difficulty.

[Illustration: THERE COULD BE NO DOUBT THAT THIS WAS THE MISSING LETTER.]

"I will go with you if you like," she said. "Could you go in the dinner hour to-morrow, if I met you at the corner of the London Road?"

"Yes, you could, Hester," said Alice, who rather envied her cousin the honour of walking into a big shop like Brading's with Miss Molly. "You could do it fine, Hester," urged Alice. "The mill is close to the London Road, and you could be at Brading's corner by five minutes after twelve."

"You meet me there at five minutes past twelve and I will take care nobody hurts you. And when you leave the mill in the afternoon, you shall come here to tea with Alice, and I will give you some nice hot cakes that Alice shall bake ready for you."

Tea with Alice, and hot cakes, was too tempting to be resisted, and Hester nodded her acceptance of the invitation, and then said: "I'll be at Brading's, and you take care of them papers, and bring 'em to-morrow when you come."

Molly breathed a sigh of relief that she would not have to part with the precious documents as she said, "Very well, I will take care of them, and I feel sure the people at Brading's will give you something for taking them back."

"Yes, perhaps they will if you go with me, but I shouldn't have much of a show there if I went by myself."

Molly laughed. "I think you would find it all right," she said; "I am sure it will be, in fact."

And then she bade the girl good-night and went off with her prize to find Arthur and tell him what she had discovered.

But when she reached the dining-room, she found that Mr. Andrews had just come in.

Arthur had been out, and, meeting the old gentleman not far from the gate, had brought him in to see his mother.

The lawyer congratulated her upon her restoration to health and being able to join the family circle once more.

And Mrs. Murray, who had always carefully avoided meeting Mr. Andrews, was quite suave and pleasant in her greeting, for she had begun to understand the condition of affairs now, and was willing to fall in with the arrangements by which Arthur's inheritance would become a valuable property.

"You will have to be careful and thrifty for a year or two to come," said Mr. Andrews, "for although I have managed to pull the chestnut out of the fire for you, still there will be no ready money for you yet. You see, I have had to sell one or two parcels of land fairly cheap to get a little ready money, for cash down was what I needed. Then I have had to borrow on other securities, and the bank has lent me some, so that I have been able to pay Lady Mary the last penny we owed her this morning, and all the debts and securities are safe in my hands once more."

The old man spoke as triumphantly as though he had just won back the crown jewels, and he looked as fondly at Arthur as though he was the young king who would wear them. "I should never have taken all the trouble I have, if I had not found out that you were a lad with a little grit and common sense, and would not be likely to let things drift down to the dogs again."

"Thank you, Mr. Andrews!" said Mrs. Murray. "You have been a friend indeed to all of us, and I am sure the least we can do is to be guided by your advice for the future. Arthur is young yet, and I am afraid I have not had much experience of the ways of the world, so that we need a disinterested friend like you at our back."

"Well, well, we shall see, as time goes on and things unfold, what we had better do. For the present, Arthur cannot do better than stay where he is. Afterwards, perhaps it would be best for him to be articled to an architect and land-surveyor, that he may learn to make the best of the land when it comes into his possession. It will take some time and money to make it as profitable as I believe it can be made, and so, for the present, you must all be content to live here as economically as you can."

It was not very pleasant advice for the old man to give or for the lady to receive, for Mrs. Murray, who had lived in luxury all her life, had begun to hope that they might leave the cottage and move to a larger house very soon, and Mr. Andrews' words had rudely dashed all her hopes at once. But she was beginning to learn the lesson of life, that the gratification of a momentary whim or pleasure might be purchased at the cost of future peace and comfort, and so she again promised to be guided by the lawyer's advice.

When he rose to leave, he went away feeling sure that his labour had not been in vain this time.

When Mr. Andrews had gone, Molly managed to drag her brother aside.

"Guess what I have got here," she whispered, touching her pocket.

Arthur made one or two guesses, but Molly was too impatient to tell her wonderful news to let him make many attempts. "I have got the missing letter," she whispered, "and it has a post office order in it. That was what Adrian meant when we met him and he said, 'If he had the cheque you had the letter,' which, of course, had more money in it than he had taken."

"Yes, we heard the other day that there was a post office order in the letter, or, at least, that he had bought one when he changed the cheque. It came out when I was arrested, but, as Mamma was only to be told that I had been arrested and released again, we did not think it worth while to tell you all the particulars."

"Naughty boy!" said Molly, shaking her finger at him. "Didn't we agree a little while ago that we would tell each other everything?" she added in a mock offended tone.

"Well, if I don't tell you, you manage to find out," answered Arthur. "But now, tell me how you have discovered what has puzzled us all so long. Where did you find the missing letter?"

"In our kitchen," answered Molly laughing.

And after her brother had puzzled over this reply for a minute or two, she said: "We gave Alice leave to have her cousin here this evening, and when I went out there to see they were not in mischief, Alice asked my advice for her cousin. She works at some paper-mill. It seems they have a great deal of waste-paper which they use up for something. And they employ girls to sort it, and this girl found a letter that had not been opened. But the post office order seems to have puzzled her, and she was so afraid that her fellow-workpeople might cheat her, that she brought it up to Alice to ask her advice, and Alice asked me."

"And what do you propose to do about it, Miss Moll? It is evidently a woman's question, or a girl's question, now."

"Yes, it is, and I am going to manage it my own way, and so you need not have anything to do with it unless you like."

"Thank you!" said Arthur mockingly.

"I am to meet this girl, Hester Piper, to-morrow about twelve o'clock near Brading's stores, and then I am going in with her, but she is to carry the letter, and when I have found Mr. Langley, she is to give him the letter and tell him where she found it."

"Capital!" said Arthur. "I could not do it much better myself."

"Well, now, I hope Mr. Langley won't be mean to the poor girl. I hope he will give her something for bringing it back; I have told her he would be sure to do this, so I hope he won't disappoint her."

"All right, Molly! I am sure they would not mind giving up all the money for the sake of having the affair satisfactorily cleared up. And I am glad, for Adrian's sake, that it has been found, not that it will make much difference to him now, for Fairmead has made up its mind that he is a bad lot, and I am glad he is not coming back to hear what people are saying about him. I had a letter from him this morning telling me about his life at the crammer's. He is very comfortable, he says, and is delighted at the idea of being a soldier. I shall write and tell him the letter was found at the paper-mill, and I know he will be glad, for he would not have been a bad fellow if Lady Mary had only known how to manage him."

The brother and sister agreed to keep the secret to themselves for the present and see what happened on the morrow.

True to her promise, Molly found Hester waiting at the corner the next day, dressed in a cotton overall and a shawl over her head, which was the costume most of the mill-girls patronized for working purposes. And having delivered the dirty but precious missive to her charge, Molly took her hand and the two girls walked into the handsome shop and asked to be directed to the tailoring department by a waiting messenger near the door.

They looked a strange pair of customers for the tailoring department as the messenger escorted them through the long shop. When Mr. Brading caught sight of them, he hurried on to be near at hand when they arrived at Mr. Langley's department, for Arthur had not kept the secret from either Mr. Brading or Mr. Bristow, and both were anxious to see whether the little mill-girl would turn up, and Mr. Brading was very glad when he saw them.

"This is Mr. Langley," said the messenger when he had convoyed the girls to the tailor's shop, and immediately Hester placed her grimy-looking missive on the counter and said, "Please, sir, is that letter for you?"

The manager took it up and looked at it before opening it, and then exclaimed rather sharply, "Where did you get this from?"

"It was in the waste at the mill. I work at Robinson's, and that was in the waste-paper which I have to sort," explained Hester.

And then Molly told him that Hester had brought it to their servant for advice as to what should be done with it.

"And you are Miss Molly Murray, I think," said another gentleman who had just joined Mr. Langley. "You see, you were not altogether unexpected," he said, smiling. Then, turning to Hester, he said, "Now, if I give you a sovereign for this piece of paper," holding up the post office order, "do you think that will do?"

"Oh yes, sir! And Miss Molly is going to give me my tea and hot cakes," said Hester, quite overcome at her good fortune, as Mr. Brading gave her the sovereign out of his own purse.

And then he wished Molly good-morning, and the two girls left the shop.

"How could it have got to the mill?" exclaimed Mr. Langley after they were gone.

"From the waste-paper basket," said Mr. Brading. "I don't think the letter ever came downstairs. Murray told us this morning that it had been found, and then remembered that one morning after the letters had been sorted, they came to fetch the waste-paper basket instead of getting it early as it should have been. There was an unusually heavy mail too that day, so that it must have slipped off the table without being noticed."

"Well, I am thankful it is found; it quite clears Mr. Murray's character," observed the manager.

"Yes, it does; not that it was necessary so far as I am concerned," said Mr. Brading. "The lad has earned a character since he has been here for straightforward honesty and truthfulness in word and deed. But still it is satisfactory to be able to prove it to all the world, for this is an inheritance that none can take from him, and, by the proof he has given of possessing these qualities, I am glad to know that he has regained his inheritance which his ancestors had well-nigh squandered in idle extravagance."

THE END.