"No, Heathcote-no," said the old man; "and I don't know that I want. Money's a trouble and an anxiety-and that's all."

A quick step outside; a gentle knock at the hall door.

One second after, Mr. Melliship was in the parlour, in the middle of them all.

He took his stand close to the table: a fine, handsome man of middle age. He bowed to them all, but without looking at anybody. His eyes looked straight before him at the wall.

They bowed in return.

His coat and gloves fitted him perfectly. They bore in their cut the indelible mark of a West-end tailor's skill.

Now, Mr. Melliship was a gentleman, and moved in the best county circles. They did not, and were afraid of him accordingly.

Mrs. Heathcote addressed him. "We began to fear something had kept you, Mr. Melliship-on this melancholy-" "Occasion" died away on her voluble tongue.

There was something very strange about the fixed gaze of Mortiboy's brother-in

law.

They all stared where he stared, and found themselves all looking at the picture of Susan Mortiboy, painted when she was a comely young woman.

Mrs. Heathcote irrepressible-recovered herself at once, and translated in an audible whisper, for the company, the thoughts that were passing in Mr. Melliship's mind.

"It is a long time since he was here. He is thinking of Susan, or of his sister Emily. It is a melancholy occasion-"

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Mortiboy," he began. Then pressed his thumb-nail hard against his teeth, and looked at the red cloth.

He gulped down some rising in his throat, made an effort to recover his self-possession, and continued-thrusting his hand into his coat-pocket

"I-I'm rather absent, I fear. To tell you all the truth, I hardly feel well this morning. I found this to-day. It-itrather shook me. You will know the writing. I wish it were true."

then, bursting with anger, turned purple in the face, for he read

"THE LATE MR. GASH'S RECIPE FOR REMOVING BALD PATCHES ON THE HEAD:-USE CAYENNE PEPPER AND COD-LIVER OIL, WELL RUBBED IN, NIGHT AND MORNING."

Old Ready-money boiled with rage, and gasped for breath.

The top of his own head was as bald as a billiard ball. Trembling violently, he handed the paper in silence to Mrs. Heathcote. She read it with amazement, and stared in expectation, first at her uncle, then at Mr. Melliship.

"Cod-liver oil and cayenne pepper! Good God, man! Years ago-your insult-to me! With my dead sister lying up-stairs, have you come here to insult me over her coffin?" roared Mr. Mortiboy, clutching his cravat with his lank fingers.

"I beg your pardon-there must be some mistake here. I am innocent of any intention to insult you."

He took the paper from Mrs. Heathcote, folded it mechanically, and replaced it in his pocket, and stared again at the portrait.

On the others, the late Mr. Gash's recipe had fallen like a bombshell.

As a matter of course, for a moment there was a slight titter. Old Ready-money was so angry-so bald-and altogether it was so funny, they forgot where they were. A titter, instantly suppressed.

They looked at Mr. Melliship for an explanation.

And he looked so strange that morning, not one of them dared ask him for it. So they sat mute.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Heathcote and Lucy, with well-meant but successless endeavours, tried to soothe the old man.

"He's d-r-u-n-k, I firmly believe," her uncle hissed in Mrs. Heathcote's ear; and he cast an angry glance at the man he had for twenty good years treated as a foe.

But there was yet one more outrage on propriety for them to bear.

Francis Melliship advanced-his head up, his chest thrust forward.

Old Ready-money involuntarily shrank

He was a coward, and afraid.

Mr. Melliship took another step in advance.

Hitherto they had looked at his face, for

the table cover had hidden his legs. Now they looked at them.

"Good heavens! Mr. Melliship. Sir--" cried the chief assistant, who had been about to endue the banker with a scarf like the others.

"Mr. Melliship!" exclaimed the lawyer and the Mayor in a breath, opening their eyes to their widest.

The old man looked. Lucy looked. "Merciful goodness!" her mother shrieked; "why, you've got light-ahem!-trousers

on!"

The astonishment and confusion you can imagine. If you doubt it, try the effect yourself.

"I think, Mr. Mortiboy, you do Melliship an injustice. Before to-day I've heard of his drinking more than is good for him; but I never believed it. I think he is ill !" "John!" exclaimed his wife.

"He never meant to insult you or anybody else. He is too much the gentleman to do it."

The old man was getting purple again. "John!!" and Lydia pinched him as hard as she could.

Various suggestions were made as to the cause and meaning of this strange conduct of Mr. Melliship's.

All the while, the solution lay neatly folded on the floor.

Dr. Kerby entered the room-suave, polite. He began to stammer an apology for being a few minutes late; "in fact, he had been-a-attending Lady--"

"Mr. Mortiboy-Mr. Battiscombe-what is the matter?"

A pause. He looked round, and met Francis Melliship's eyes full.

And he read their meaning. "Oh-h-h! we are very old friends, and very good friends," he said, linking his arm in Mr. Melliship's; "and, my dear sir, as one of the most amiable and polite men I ever met a man who never refused me a request-"

"No; my purse is always at the service. of the poor. You mean the chequefor the Hospital I said I would-"

-

"I must ask you for five minutes of your valuable time; and, as a great favour, nowat once."

They walked out arm in arm in the direction of Mr. Melliship's house.

As they left the room, the doctor had looked behind him very significantly.

Then they forgot everything in the strange scene they had just witnessed. The old man all anger-Lucy sorry-the others curious.

"I say he's disgracefully tipsy, at one o'clock in the day, and the doctor knew it. But, Mr. Francis Melliship, I shall be even with you"-then, in a lower tone, "some day-soon."

The politic lawyer was inclined to assent. True, he did not number among his clients Francis Melliship.

John Heathcote spoke out his mind.

the recipe for bald spots.

She just glanced at the contents-lest, perchance, she should add fuel to the fireand handed her uncle a letter in which his wife, Francis Melliship's sister, had tried to heal a family dispute between her husband and her brother with true woman's tact; and hoped and foretold, and prayed too, that they might live in brotherly love for the future.

The old man read it, and frowned over it. "This is what Mr. Melliship meant to give you, Uncle Richard, I feel sure. gave you the other by mistake."

He

Old Ready-money shook his head slowly and incredulously.

"Why did he give me the other, then? He is not sober, that's why."

Everybody else believed Lucy's surmise was true. But this did not explain Mr. Melliship's extraordinary conduct in coming to a funeral without being dressed for one.

The whole thing was a riddle, and they were dying to solve it, but could not.

"Will he come back? Are we to wait ?" they whispered.

Now all this had wasted half an hour or more; and the men standing at the door were frozen.

No stress of weather must shake a mute's decorum. So their teeth chattered, and their hands and feet were numbed dead.

A decent servant maid came in, and whispered something in the ear of Mrs. Heathcote. She referred her to her uncle.

But the chief mourner was deaf, and the message had to be repeated aloud. When he heard it, he exclaimed, with much irritation-

"Hester ! Brandy! Who for? The mutes? Now, what do mutes want with brandy?"

"They are starved, sir, with the cold," said the chief assistant, "and I thought you might be pleased to send them a little drop before we start. Very sorry to trouble you, but the maid said you had the key."

"Certainly not. They can't require it at such a time. They're paid, I suppose." "Their teeth, sir, they quite chatter; and Mr. Mopes he's snivelling with the cold, and can't help himself, poor man. I beg your pardon, sir; but a day like this, mutes will get chilled; and when one's teeth get chattering it looks like a snivel, hold your crape how you may."

"Then tell him not to snivel, from me. Hewas before me the other day--he snivelled then. It's a way he's got, I think. God bless my heart!-can't they jump about, and keep 'emselves warm? I do it."

The revolutionary boldness of Mr. Mortiboy's proposition so utterly staggered the undertaker, that he stood full thirty seconds before he spoke in reply.

"Not well, sir. You see, it isn't usual, sir— with the profession. But I'll tell them what you say."

A grunt.

Enter Hester the maid again.

"Dr. Kerby's compliments, sir, and he's very sorry, and neither he nor Mr. Melliship will be able to be present at the funeral. Mr. Melliship's taken ill."

The others wondered very much, and went without them.

Mrs. Heathcote and Lucy spent the time that they were away in settling the nature of Mr. Francis Melliship's complaint. But they were a long way out in their

guesses.

AF

CHAPTER THE SECOND. FTER the coaches had set the mourners down again at Mr. Mortiboy's house, the funeral party had still two pieces of business to perform.

They had to eat the luncheon provided for them, and to hear the will read.

The question they silently debated was whether Susan Mortiboy-who all her life had spent half her income in works of charity, and the other half on keeping up a house for her brother to live in-had ventured to leave any of her money to anything or anybody but Ready-money Mortiboy by

her will. She possessed a sum of twentyfive thousand pounds, left her by her father. This sum her brother at once took out of the Three per Cent. Consols for her, and reinvested it at two per cent.grudgingly paid- with himself. As her life was for years considered a bad one-physicallyher brother paid the interest over to her for two very good reasons. First, he thought he should not have to pay it very long; secondly, because she had the absolute power of disposing of the principal by her will.

This led him to regard charitable institutions of all kinds as his natural enemiesthough, for decency's sake, he subscribed five guineas a-year to the county infirmary, and two to the Albert Dispensary. For he felt sure that, if he did not inherit his sister's money, the charities would get it among them.

So, twelve years and two months before our story opens, he availed himself of a fit of indisposition more severe than usual to help his sister Susan to make her will. Now, he had in his library a mischievous octavo volume called "Every Man his own Lawyer," published for one Grantham, in the Strand, and seven other worthies of the trade, in the year of our Lord 1826. Out of this he took a form of a testamentary instrument, in which Richard Roe bequeathed to John Doe certain personal property, under certain conditions, set out with all the old-fashioned piety and verbosity common in the wills and testaments of half a century ago. For this will in the book fitted his sister Susan's intentions to a T. Mr. Mortiboy had struggled hard to make her bequeath her property to him absolutely, but she would not consent; so he gave in with a good grace, made her will himself, and saved three or four guineas Lawyer Battiscombe ought to have pocketed. He read it over to her, and she signed it, in the presence of Hester Noble, domestic servant, and George Smith, gardener; and Mr. Mortiboy locked it up in his safe till it should be wanted: through having taken effect. And this was it fairly written out, in old Ready-money's clerkly autograph

"In the Name of God Amen I Susan Mortiboy of Derngate in the town of Market Basing in the county of Holm spinster being of sound and disposing mind memory and understanding but mindful of my mortality do this second day of December in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and forty-nine

make and publish this my last Will and testament in manner and form following that is to say First I desire to be decently and privately buried in the churchyard of the parish in which I shall happen to die without any funeral pomp and with as little expence as may be—”

"Now, that I perfectly agree with," her brother had said, as he was making a rough draft of the will. "The author? Mr. Gifford. Well, Mr. Gifford, you're a very sensible man. You're just of my mind in the matter. No useless pomp and expense."

At this point in the proceedings, however, the old gentleman's feelings had been grossly outraged, for his sister had put him to the pain of writing the words that gave away four hundred pounds sterling, and made certain little specific bequests of personal ef fects. Reluctantly, too, he had added—

"And as to all the rest residue and remainder of my estate whatsoever and wheresoever and of what nature kind and quality soever the same may be and not hereinbefore given and disposed of after payment of my just debts legacies funeral expences and the expence of proving this my Will I do Will I do hereby give and bequeath the same to and unto John Heathcote of Hunslope in the county of Holm gentleman and to and unto George Heathcote of Launton Grange in the same county gentleman nevertheless in trust for and to the use of-"

And the trust was this.

The trustees were to hold the twenty-five thousand pounds for twelve years from the .date of the will, and then pay it, with the interest accruing thereon, to Richard Matthew Mortiboy, testatrix's brother-if her nephew, Richard Melliship Mortiboy, should not durring that time be heard of, or his death be satisfactorily proved. In the event of his coming back, he was to have the money absolutely.

The twelve years had gone. Dick had not turned up, and it was two months over the limit put down in the will.

The money was Mortiboy's.

So after a little preliminary humming and hawing, he went to the safe, and fetched the will.

"I did not draw that instrument," said Mr. Battiscombe.

"I made it myself," said Mr. Mortiboy. "The lawyer's best friend is the man that makes his own will-or, for the matter of that, anybody else's."

"Anybody who can read and write, and add two and two together, can make a will. Mr. Ghrimes? I've heard you say so, often enough."

"We shall see," said the lawyer, telegraphing privately under the table to Ghrimes, by treading on his only corn.

"You will see, Mr. Battiscombe," replied the old gentleman, proudly. He loved law, and delighted to dabble in high-sounding phraseology, of the technical meaning of which he knew nothing at all.

"I think you might have let me have a finger in the pie, sir."

As he spoke, the lawyer telegraphed again to Ghrimes; but the tender toe was gone this time. Mr. Battiscombe's boot only

pressed the carpet.

"The Court always carries out a man's clear and obvious intentions. I've known this ever since I could read about a probate case."

"Subject to certain rules, more or less clearly defined, sir. No doubt, Mr. Mortiboy has made no mistake"-signalling to Ghrimes again. "At least, I'm sure I hope so."

"The thing's as plain as a pikestaff. Your boy-that sweeps your office-might have put down my poor dear sister Susan's wishes in black and white as well as you could, Mr. Battiscombe."

"Permit me to doubt it, Mr. Mortiboy: as I found out, one day last week, that he can read, but can't write."

"Then it's a scandal to Market Basing; for there-are-no-less--than four charity schools!"

"He came from Hunslope."

"I asked Battiscombe to take him,” said Mr. Heathcote. "He's my wife's gardener's boy."

"We can't be expected to teach all Hunslope the three Rs, Uncle Richard," said his niece, apologetically.

"Certainly not, Lydia. Now, I think I may read the-subject of discussion. It is very simple, and very clear-hem!—to my mind."

Old Mortiboy took up his stand near the window. The rest faced round. Ghrimes and Battiscombe exchanged signals again. Having cleared his throat several times, the old gentleman threw himself heart and soul into the business at hand.

He read the will through, from end to end, and nobody made a remark.

"There," said he, looking triumphantly at the lawyer. "I think that is clear enough, even for you, Mr. Battiscombe; and I will say, I have always found you a clear-headed man. The effect is plain, except for those conf-ahem!-legacies. She left her money to Dick-though she knew he was dead when she did it: that was like a woman's obstinacy. And Dick has not come within the twelve years-it's two months over now. And the money's mine-eh, John Heathcote? You see it? You're a trustee?'

Mr. Heathcote made a motion with his hand towards Mr. Battiscombe.

They all looked at the lawyer. He said "So far as regards the effect you intended it to produce, Mr. Mortiboy, the will is waste paper, and—”

"Now, Battiscombe, you're a pleasant man, and like your joke, and all that; but I put it to you-is this a time for fun?"

"And I answer-no time for fun. Sir, I will stake my reputation, as your legal adviser, on what I say. The trust takes effect from the death of Miss Mortiboy, not from the making of her will. I should have told you that if you had honoured me with your instructions."

The folios of blue paper dropped from Mr. Mortiboy's hand. He gasped for breath, turned very yellow, and looked faint as a spent stag.

Lydia-quick-witted-recovered herself first: she saw through the matter in a mo

ment.

"Well, uncle," she said, trying to put the best face on the affair, "you'll have the interest for twelve years, and then have the money. It won't matter to you much, I dare say."

She said this quite cheerfully to her uncle. The old man pointed his trembling finger towards Ghrimes, and shook his head.

The managing clerk had risen from his seat. "Mr. Mortiboy," he said, "I feel it is time I should speak. Perhaps you will think I have done wrong. My excuse must be that Miss Mortiboy-to whose kindness I owed much all my life-made me do what I did. I—I——There is a codicil to the will you have read."

And as he said this, he pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket.

Except the lawyer, everybody was alive with interest.

"Miss Susan made us-Mr. Battiscombe and me-promise sacredly we would never mention this to-"

"You never deceived me before—that I know of-young man. But no promise ought to have kept you from coming straight to me. When did my sister-make a fool of herself, eh ?-eh? Go on!"

"The week before she died, Miss Susan called in-"

"You and Battiscombe. Go on! What has she done? For God's sake, out with it!"

Briefly told, she had done this. Revoked her bequest to her nephew, Richard Melliship Mortiboy; given the twenty-five thousand pounds to her brother; made him sole executor and residuary legatee, and directed him to put a stained window to her memory in St. Giles's Church; ratified and confirmed the other legacies contained in her will.

The executor's face brightened for one. moment when Ghrimes got to the important clause of the codicil.

It clouded again when he heard of the window he was to pay for out of his money.

This subject of complaint lasted him for the rest of the short afternoon, as they sat gloomily over the port and sherry, and the remnants of the funeral collation.

But if he forgot his trouble about the window, it was to recollect his grievance against his sister for not trusting him, and against the lawyer and his confidential clerk for not telling him what was being done.

"She knew I never would have let her have any window or nonsense: that was it," he said, over and over again.

The truth was, his sister had loved her church, had loved her work at the schools, and among the poor, and she did want her memory to dwell among them.

At last-and it seemed a long time in coming-the old man was left alone.

Now, as we know that Mr. Richard Matthew Mortiboy-commonly called Readymoney Mortiboy-is the principal legatee under this codicil to his sister's will; and as he is a very rich man, and gives the title to this matter-of-fact story, let us here trace his pedigree, and say a word or two about him.