should be handled by the heir. The business
training the old man had given him was synonymous with conditions not
expressed in the will. The dead man believed that he had drilled into
the youth an unmistakable conception of what was expected of him in
life; if he failed in these expectations the misfortune would be his
alone to bear; a road had been carved out for him and behind him
stretched a long line of guide-posts whose laconic instructions might
be ignored but never forgotten. Edwin Peter Brewster evidently made his
will with the sensible conviction that it was necessary for him to die
before anybody else could possess his money, and that, once dead, it
would be folly for him to worry over the way in which beneficiaries
might choose to manage their own affairs.

The house in Fifth Avenue went to a sister, together with a million or
two, and the residue of the estate found kindly disposed relatives who
were willing to keep it from going to the Home for Friendless Fortunes.
Old Mr. Brewster left his affairs in order. The will nominated Jerome
Buskirk as executor, and he was instructed, in conclusion, to turn over
to Montgomery Brewster, the day after the will was probated, securities
to the amount of one million dollars, provided for in clause four of
the instrument. And so it was that on the 26th of September young Mr.
Brewster had an unconditional fortune thrust upon him, weighted only
with the suggestion of crepe that clung to it.

Since his grandfather's death he had been staying at the gloomy old
Brewster house in Fifth Avenue, paying but two or three hurried visits
to the rooms at Mrs. Gray's, where he had made his home. The gloom of
death still darkened the Fifth Avenue place, and there was a stillness,
a gentle stealthiness about the house that made him long for more
cheerful companionship. He wondered dimly if a fortune always carried
the suggestion of tube-roses. The richness and strangeness of it all
hung about him unpleasantly. He had had no extravagant affection for
the grim old dictator who was dead, yet his grandfather was a man and
had commanded his respect. It seemed brutal to leave him out of the
reckoning--to dance on the grave of the mentor who had treated him
well. The attitude of the friends who clapped him on the back, of the
newspapers which congratulated him, of the crowd that expected him to
rejoice, repelled him. It seemed a tragic comedy, haunted by a severe
dead face. He was haunted, to