“The lawyers who are to defend me have tried to get Experts, as they call them, to interpret the cipher.  The Experts have all failed.  They will declare, if they are called as witnesses, that the signs on the paper are not according to any known rules, and are marks made at random, meaning nothing.

“As for any statement, on my part, of the confession made to me, the law refuses to hear it, except from the mouth of a witness.  I might prove that the ship’s course was changed, contrary to my directions, after I had gone below to rest, if I could find the man who was steering at the time.  God only knows where that man is.

“On the other hand, the errors of my past life, and my being in debt, are circumstances dead against me.  The lawyers seem to trust almost entirely in a famous counsel, whom they have engaged to defend me.  For my own part, I go to my trial with little or no hope.

“If the verdict is guilty, and if you have any regard left for my character, never rest until you have found somebody who can interpret these cursed signs.  Do for me, I say, what I cannot do for myself.  Recover the diamonds; and, when you restore them, show my owners this letter.

“Kiss the children for me.  I wish them, when they are old enough, to read this defense of myself and to know that their father, who loved them dearly, was an innocent man.  My good brother will take care of you, for my sake.  I have done.

RoderickWesterfield.”

Mrs. Westerfield took up the cipher once more.  She looked at it as if it were a living thing that defied her.

“If I am able to read this gibberish,” she decided, “I know what I’ll do with the diamonds!”

4.—­The Garret.

One year exactly after the fatal day of the trial, Mrs. Westerfield (secluded in the sanctuary of her bedroom) celebrated her release from the obligation of wearing widow’s weeds.

The conventional graduations in the outward expression of grief, which lead from black clothing to gray, formed no part of this afflicted lady’s system of mourning.  She laid her best blue walking dress and her new bonnet to match on the bed, and admired them to her heart’s content.  Her discarded garments were left on the floor.  “Thank Heaven, I’ve done with you!” she said—­and kicked her rusty mourning out of the way as she advanced to the fireplace to ring the bell.

“Where is my little boy?” she asked, when the landlady entered the room.

“He’s down with me in the kitchen, ma’am; I’m teaching him to make a plum cake for himself.  He’s so happy!  I hope you don’t want him just now?”

“Not the least in the world.  I want you to take care of him while I am away.  By-the-by, where’s Syd?”

The elder child (the girl) had been christened Sydney, in compliment to one of her father’s female relatives.  The name was not liked by her mother—­who had shortened it to Syd, by way of leaving as little of it as possible.  With a look at Mrs. Westerfield which expressed ill-concealed aversion, the landlady answered:  “She’s up in the lumber-room, poor child.  She says you sent her there to be out of the way.”