'than she will be under any other roof I
could find for her.' "

And now there arrived another stranger to
L——, sent for by Mr. Jeeves, the lawyer;—a
stranger to L——, but not to me; my old
Edinburgh acquaintance, Richard Strahan.

The will in Mr. Jeeves's keeping, with its
recent codicil, was opened and read. The will
itself bore date about six years anterior to the
testator's tragic death: it was very short, and,
with the exception of a few legacies, of which
the most important was ten thousand pounds to
his ward, the whole of his property was left to
Richard Strahan, on the condition that he took the
name and arms of Derval within a year from the
date of Sir Philip's decease. The codicil, added to
the will the night before his death, increased the
legacy to the young lady from ten to thirty thousand
pounds, and bequeathed an annuity of one
hundred pounds a year to his Albanian servant.
Accompanying the will, and within the same
envelope, was a sealed letter, addressed to Richard
Strahan, and dated at Paris two weeks before Sir
Philip's decease. Strahan brought that letter to
me. It ran thus: "Richard Strahan, I advise
you to pull down the house called Derval Court,
and to build another on a better site, the plans
of which, to be modified according to your own
taste and requirements, will be found among
my papers. This is a recommendation, not a
command. But I strictly enjoin you entirely
to demolish the more ancient part, which
was chiefly occupied by myself, and to destroy
by fire, without perusal, all the books and
manuscripts found in the safes in my study. I have
appointed you my sole executor, as well as my
heir, because I have no personal friends in
whom I can confide as I trust I may do in the
man I have never seen, simply because he will
bear my name and represent my lineage. There
will be found in my writing-desk, which, always
accompanies me in my travels, an
autobiographical work, a record of my own life,
comprising discoveries, or hints at discovery, in
science, through means little cultivated in our
age. You will not be surprised that before
selecting you as my heir and executor, from a
crowd of relations not more distant, I should
have made inquiries in order to justify my selection.
The result of those inquiries informs me that
you have not yourself the peculiar knowledge
nor the habits of mind that could enable you to
judge of matters which demand the attainments
and the practice of science; but that you are of
an honest affectionate nature, and will regard
as sacred the last injunctions of a benefactor. I
enjoin you, then, to submit the aforesaid
manuscript memoir to some man on whose character
for humanity and honour you can place
confidential reliance, and who is accustomed to
the study of the positive sciences, more
especially chemistry, in connexion with electricity
and magnetism. My desire is that he shall
edit and arrange this memoir for publication;
and that, wherever he feels a conscientious
doubt whether any discovery, or hint of
discovery, therein contained, would not prove more
dangerous than useful to mankind, he shall
consult with any other three men of science whose
names are a guarantee for probity and knowledge,
and according to the best of his judgment, after
such consultation, suppress or publish the passage
of which he has so doubted. I own the ambition
which first directed me towards studies of a very
unusual character, and which has encouraged
me in their pursuit through many years of voluntary
exile, in lands where they could be best
facilitated or aided—the ambition of leaving behind
me the renown of a bold discoverer in those
recesses of nature which philosophy has hitherto
abandoned to superstition. But I feel, at the
moment in which I trace these lines, a fear lest,
in the absorbing interest of researches which tend
to increase to a marvellous degree the power of
man over all matter, animate or inanimate, I may
have blunted my own moral perceptions; and
that there may be much in the knowledge which I
sought and acquired from the pure desire of
investigating hidden truths, that could be more
abused to purposes of tremendous evil than be
likely to conduce to benignant good. And of
this a mind disciplined to severe reasoning, and
uninfluenced by the enthusiasm which has
probably obscured my own judgment, should be the
unprejudiced arbiter. Much as I have coveted
and still do covet that fame which makes the
memory of one man the common inheritance of
all, I would infinitely rather that my name should
pass away with my breath, than that I should
transmit to my fellow-men any portion of a
knowledge which the good might forbear to
exercise and the bad might unscrupulously
pervert. I bear about with me, wherever I wander,
a certain steel casket. I received this casket
with its contents from a man whose memory I
hold in profound veneration. Should I live to
find a person whom, after minute and intimate
trial of his character, I should deem worthy of
such confidence, it is my intention to communicate
to him the secret how to prepare and how
to use such of the powders and essences stored
within that casket as I myself have ventured to
employ. Others I have never tested, nor do I
know how they could be re-supplied if lost or
wasted. But as the contents of this casket, in
the hands of any one not duly instructed as to
the mode of applying them, would either be
useless, or conduce, through inadvertent and
ignorant misapplication, to the most dangerous
consequences; so, if I die without having found, and
in writing named, such a confidant as I have
described above, I command you immediately to
empty all the powders and essences found therein
into any running stream of water, which will at
once harmlessly dissolve them. On no account
must they be cast into fire!

"This letter, Richard Strahan, will only come
under your eyes in case the plans and the hopes
which I have formed for my earthly future should
be frustrated by the death on which I do not