ery detail as his legal
knowledge could make it. Apostrophizing it openly, before he began,
as damned nonsense, he was yet not without a certain delight in the
task. It was quite easy to see that Simon Basset, whatever motive he
might have had in his proposition, was beyond measure terrified at
its acceptance. With his bristling chin dropping nervously, and his
forehead contracted with anxious wrinkles, he questioned Jerome.

"Look at here," he said, with a tight clutch on Jerome's sleeve, "I
want to know, young man. There ain't no property anywheres in your
family, is there? There ain't no second nor third nor fourth cousins
out West anywheres that's got property?"

"No, there are not," said Jerome, impatiently shaking off his hand.

"Your father didn't have no uncle that had money?"

"I tell you there isn't a dollar in the family that I know of," cried
Jerome. "I have nothing to do with all this, and I want you to
understand it. All I said was, and I say it now, if in any way any
money should ever fall to me, I would give it away; and I will,
whether anybody else does or not."

"You don't mean money you earn; you mean money that falls to you--"

"I mean if ever I get enough money in a lump to make me rich,"
replied Jerome, doggedly.

"I want to know how much money you are goin' to call rich," demanded
Simon Basset.

"Ten thousand dollars," replied Jerome, whose estimate of wealth was
not large.

Simon Basset cried out with sharp protest at that, and Doctor
Prescott evidently agreed with him.

"Any man might scrape together ten thousand dollars," said Basset.
"Lord! he might steal that much."

The amount of wealth which the document should specify was finally
fixed at twenty-five thousand dollars, which was, moreover, to come
into Jerome's possession in full bulk and during the next ten years,
or the obligation would be null and void.

Basset also insisted upon the stipulation that Jerome, in his giving,
should not include his immediate family. "I've seen men shift their
purses into women folks' pockets, an' take 'em out again, when they
got ready, before now," he said. "I ain't goin' to have no such
gum-game as that played."

That proposition met with some little demur, though not from Jerome.

"Might just as well say I wouldn't agree not to give mother and
Elmira the moon, if it fell to me," he said to Squire Merritt.

The Squire nodded. "Let 'em put it any way they want to," he said;
"it can't hu