regularly executed, all its provisions seeming, as he glanced
through it, reasonable and feasible. As he laid it aside, he experienced
the business man's satisfaction with a document duly capable of the
ends desired. Then he opened with a sudden flicker of curiosity a bulky
envelope placed with the will and addressed to himself. He read it
through, the natural interest on his face succeeded by amazement,
increasing gradually to fear, the chill drops starting from every pore.
He had grown ghastly white before he had concluded the perusal, and for
a long time he sat as motionless as if turned to stone.

The September day glowed outside in sumptuous splendor. A glad wind
sprang up and sped afield. Geraldine, her breakfast finished, a broad
hat canted down over her eyes, rushed through the hall as noisily as a
boy, prodded up the old hound, and ran him a race around the semicircle
of the drive. A trained hound he had been in his youth, and he was
wont to conceal and deny certain ancient accomplishments. But even
he realized that it was waste of breath to say nay to the persistent
Geraldine. He resigned himself to go through all his repertoire,--was a
dead dog, begged, leaped a stick back and forth, went lame, and in his
newly awakened interest performed several tricks of which she had
been unaware. Her joyful cries of commendation--"Played an encore! _an
encore!_ He did, he did! Cutest old dog in the United States!" caught
Mrs. Keene's attention.

"Geraldine," she screamed from an upper window, "come in out of the sun!
You will have a sun-stroke--and ruin your complexion besides! You know
you ought to be helping that man with those papers,--he won't be able
to do anything without you!" Her voice quavered on the last words, as if
she suddenly realized "that man" might overhear her,--as indeed he did.
But he made no sign. He sat still, stultified and stony, silently gazing
at the paper in his hands.

When luncheon was announced, Gordon asked to have something light sent
in to him, as he wished not to be disturbed in his investigation of the
documents. He had scant need to apprehend interruption, however, while
the long afternoon wore gradually away. The universal Southern siesta
was on, and the somnolent mansion was like the castle of Sleeping
Beauty. The ladies had sought their apartments and the downy couches;
the cook, on a shady bench under the trellis, nodded as she seeded the
raisins for the frozen pudding of the six