n
by the heir of an estate (usually of an entailed estate), which matures
the moment the drawer of the document enters into that estate. That is
to say, the tender-hearted son discounts his father's death to provide
fuel to feed his flame. So Edwin James, driven to his own destruction,
stooped from his imperial position into what one might call ankle-depth
of crime.

How little he dreamed there was a beyond--a huge, seething sea of crime;
an ocean whose billows are of ink, and which would soon sweep him from
his high place into the black waters, there to be buffeted until, honor
and hope all gone, he would, throwing his hands to heaven, with one
despairing cry, sink into its inky depths, adding one more ruined life
to the millions already engulfed. In that long, sad catalogue of the
dead there is probably not one, who, when taking the first step into
crime, ever thought a second would follow the first.

But to come back to our gilded sir. He made out two post-obits for
L5,000, wrote his client's name at the bottom of each, gave them to the
money lenders, who, never doubting that the prodigal son had signed and
given them to his counsel, made no question, but gave James the money
for them at once. But James had reckoned without his host, for this
nineteenth century prodigal was made of keener metal than he of the
first. Strange to say, and utterly unexpected as it was to all who knew
him and had looked upon his riotous living, he kept his books straight,
and knew to a single guinea how much and to whom he was owing.

His discovery of the forgery was accelerated by the sudden and most
unexpected death of his father, his return home and stepping into his
estate.

The various post-obits were presented and placed before him. He
instantly pronounced the two for five thousand pounds each to be
forgeries, and the crime was easily laid at the door of the Queen's
Counsel. The heir indignantly refused to condone the offense, and,
revealing the fatal secret to a few, within a month it was known in
every clubroom in London. From there it got into the newspapers, and
they, under a thinly disguised alias of a "distinguished member of the
Bar," gave more or less accurate details of the damning truth. His
former client eventually said he would not prosecute the forgery if the
criminal left England; if not, he would immediately go before the Grand
Jury, procure an indictment, and have this man, who had moved a prince
among men, arra