his listener eager, and again to find him grown
indifferent. He wondered dimly if this were a pose.

In brief, the last will of James T. Sedgwick bequeathed everything,
real and personal, of which he died possessed, to his only nephew,
Montgomery Brewster of New York, son of Robert and Louise Sedgwick
Brewster. Supplementing this all-important clause there was a set of
conditions governing the final disposition of the estate. The most
extraordinary of these conditions was the one which required the heir
to be absolutely penniless upon the twenty-sixth anniversary of his
birth, September 23d.

The instrument went into detail in respect to this supreme condition.
It set forth that Montgomery Brewster was to have no other worldly
possession than the clothes which covered him on the September day
named. He was to begin that day without a penny to his name, without a
single article of jewelry, furniture or finance that he could call his
own or could thereafter reclaim. At nine o'clock, New York time, on the
morning of September 23d, the executor, under the provisions of the
will, was to make over and transfer to Montgomery Brewster all of the
moneys, lands, bonds, and interests mentioned in the inventory which
accompanied the will. In the event that Montgomery Brewster had not, in
every particular, complied with the requirements of the will, to the
full satisfaction of the said executor, Swearengen Jones, the estate
was to be distributed among certain institutions of charity designated
in the instrument. Underlying this imperative injunction of James
Sedgwick was plainly discernible the motive that prompted it. In almost
so many words he declared that his heir should not receive the fortune
if he possessed a single penny that had come to him, in any shape or
form, from the man he hated, Edwin Peter Brewster. While Sedgwick could
not have known at the time of his death that the banker had bequeathed
one million dollars to his grandson, it was more than apparent that he
expected the young man to be enriched liberally by his enemy. It was to
preclude any possible chance of the mingling of his fortune with the
smallest portion of Edwin P. Brewster's that James Sedgwick, on his
deathbed, put his hand to this astonishing instrument.

There was also a clause in which he undertook to dictate the conduct of
Montgomery Brewster during the year leading up to his twenty-sixth
anniversary. He required that the young man should give sa