Mr. Craggie smiled vaguely.

“You see,” said Lawyer Perkins, “there’s a will and no will,—­that is to say, the fragments of what is supposed to be a will were found, and we are trying to put the pieces together.  It is doubtful if we can do it; it is doubtful if we can decipher it after we have done it; and if we decipher it it is a question whether the document is valid or not.”

“That is a masterly exposition of the dilemma, Mr. Perkins,” said the school-master warmly.

Mr. Perkins had spoken in his court-room tone of voice, with one hand thrust into his frilled shirt-bosom.  He removed this hand for a second, as he gravely bowed to Mr. Pinkham.

“Nothing could be clearer,” said Mr. Ward.  “In case the paper is worthless, what then?  I am not asking you in your professional capacity,” he added hastily; for Lawyer Perkins had been known to send in a bill on as slight a provocation as Mr. Ward’s.

“That’s a point.  The next of kin has his claims.”

“My friend Shackford, of course,” broke in Mr. Craggie.  “Admirable young man!—­one of my warmest supporters.”

“He is the only heir at law so far as we know,” said Mr. Perkins.

“Oh,” said Mr. Craggie, reflecting.  “The late Mr. Shackford might have had a family in Timbuctoo or the Sandwich Islands.”

“That’s another point.”

“The fact would be a deuced unpleasant point for young Shackford to run against,” said Mr. Ward.

“Exactly.”

“If Mr. Lemuel Shackford,” remarked Coroner Whidden, softly joining the conversation to which he had been listening in his timorous, apologetic manner, “had chanced, in the course of his early sea-faring days, to form any ties of an unhappy complexion”—­

“Complexion is good,” murmured Mr. Craggie.  “Some Hawaiian lady!”

—­“perhaps that would be a branch of the case worth investigating in connection with the homicide.  A discarded wife, or a disowned son, burning with a sense of wrong”—­

“Really, Mr. Whidden!” interrupted Lawyer Perkins witheringly, “it is bad enough for my client to lose his life, without having his reputation filched away from him.”

“I—­I will explain!  I was merely supposing”—­

“The law never supposes, sir!”

This threw Mr. Whidden into great mental confusion.  As coroner was he not an integral part of the law, and when, in his official character, he supposed anything was not that a legal supposition?  But was he in his official character now, sitting with a glass of lemonade at his elbow in the reading-room of the Stillwater hotel?  Was he, or was he not, a coroner all the time?  Mr. Whidden stroked an isolated tuft of hair growing low on the middle of his forehead, and glared mildly at Mr. Perkins.

“Young Shackford has gone to New York, I understand,” said Mr. Ward, breaking the silence.

Mr. Perkins nodded.  “Went this morning to look after the real-estate interests there.  It will probably keep him a couple of weeks,—­the longer the better.  He was of no use here.  Lemuel’s death was a great shock to him, or rather the manner of it was.”