become with him a clap-trap
scheme to rob investors. I don't know how he means to do it, but he will
do it. There is a chance that the company may get good money out of the
Canaan Tigmores in zinc, but there is a much richer chance that Madeira
will get good money out of the company, zinc or no zinc.

So here I am in a pleasant situation. I can take my choice between a
block of shares in the new company, my vote to be in Madeira's control,
and a place far back, where I can watch Madeira operate my land to his
profit while I wait for old Grierson to die. I am holding off as yet,
dazzled by both prospects. Meantime the organisation of Madeira's
company is being effected among the local capitalists, the store-keepers
and the substantial farmers, and it's only a question of a few days
until the directorate shuts in my face. Madeira is to take me over to
Joplin to-morrow,--to let the showing there have its effect upon me, to
let me catch the ore fever, I suspect.

Immediately upon my arrival here, I looked into the history of my
relationship to Grierson, and also looked up the record of the Peele
will. Grierson is the grandson of one of the sisters of old Bruce
Peele, while I am the great-great-grandson of another sister. My
great-grandfather did not like pioneer life and went back East to live
and cultivate the Steering family-tree into me, as the last, topmast,
splendid blossom. The Grierson family stayed in Missouri and petered out
into this Bruce Grierson. He is of my grandfather's generation, though
he is a much younger man than a grandfather of mine could possibly be
with the record of my age and my father's age to be accounted for.

[Illustration: Two branches of the family tree.]

I got profoundly excited in studying out the two branches of the family
that are involved in the entail. Here is a map of the relationship for
your benefit.

You can understand from that, can't you, Carington?[1]

The Peele will is simple. Old Bruce Peele lived a long life as a
bachelor, with a strong aversion to matrimony. Toward the end he
suffered one of those revolutions in valuations that sometimes upturn
people of extreme prejudices. His will sets forth emphatically that he
came tardily to realise that posterity is the best thing a man can leave
behind him. He had two sisters, both of whom were well along in life,
unmarried, and possessed of their brother's disinclination to marry. To
encourage them to cross the Rubicon he made