was grave and apparently much troubled. Perhaps, if their
thought had not been given so entirely to the bazaar during the last
few days, the lawyer's wife and daughter would before this have
noticed his worriment of mind.

"Is it that Ellison case, Robert?" Mrs. Norwood asked, at the dinner
table.

"It is the bane of my existence," declared the lawyer, with
exasperation. "Those women are determined to obtain a much greater
share of the estate than belongs to them or than the testator ever
intended. Their testimony, I believe, is false. But as the
apportionment of the property of the deceased Mr. Ellison must be
decided by verbal rather than written evidence, the story those women
tell--and stick to--bears weight with the Surrogate."

"Your clients are likely to lose their share, then?" his wife asked.

"Unless we can get at the truth. I fear that neither of those women
knows what the truth means. Ha! If we could find the one witness, the
one who was present when the old man dictated his will at the last!
Well!"

"Can't you find her?" asked Momsy, who had, it seemed, known
something about the puzzling case before.

"Not a trace. The old man, Abel Ellison, died suddenly in Martha
Poole's house. She and the other woman are cousins and were distantly
related to Ellison. He had a shock or a stroke, or something, while he
was calling on Mrs. Poole. It did not affect his brain at all. The
physicians are sure of that. Their testimony is clear.

"But neither of them heard what the old man said to the lawyer that
Mrs. Poole sent for. McCracken is a scaly practitioner. He has been
bought over, body and soul, by the two women. You see, they are a
sporty crowd--race track habitues, and all that. The other woman--her
name is Bothwell--has driven automobiles in races. She is a regular
speed fiend, they tell me.

"Anyhow, they are all of a kind, the two women and McCracken. As
Ellison had never made a will that anybody knows of, and this
affidavit regarding his dictated wishes is the only instrument brought
into court, the Surrogate is inclined to give the thing weight.

"Here comes in our missing witness, a young girl who worked for Mrs.
Poole. She was examined by my chief clerk and admitted she heard all
that was said in the room where Ellison died. Her testimony
diametrically opposes several items which McCracken has written into
the unsigned testament of the deceased.

"You see what we are up against when I tell you th