all their power to keep the fact a secret and
forbidden their employees to breathe a word about it to any one. But now
the case was different. All the morning papers had long accounts of the
transaction. They were absurdly inaccurate, but all agreed as to the
extreme cleverness of the manager, and noticed how he had suspected,
etc., while poor Elder, who both expected and really deserved all the
glory, was not even mentioned in the newspaper accounts. However, his
feelings were soon after solaced, as Irving informed us that Elder had
stood in on a deal that paid him well.

The $5,000 we gave James eased up matters for a time. Practice he had
none, but managed to hold on in the hope of realizing on the Brea will
matter, but getting deeper and deeper in debt. One night, four years
later, the old lady, Brea's mother-in-law, had a more than usually
furious outbreak of temper, and fell to beating the three daughters
still living with her. Before it was over she had attacked and seriously
injured the eldest, and then flew to her room in a passion. Not
appearing at breakfast the next morning her daughter went to her room,
but she was not there, and the bed was undisturbed. Going to the room
that served for office and library, they found the door, as usual,
locked. Bursting it open the poor old maids found their mother huddled
in a corner of the room dead.

Truly a happy relief for the daughters. Poor girls, theirs had been a
hard life. Every suitor who tried to cultivate their acquaintance had
been driven from the door by the mother, who never spent a dollar on
their education, and her death found them all unused to the ways of the
world. The result was that all became victims of fortune-hunters, and
the unhappy ladies only changed the tyranny of an unnatural mother for
the tyranny of a husband, who in each case wedded for wealth alone, and
all three husbands were uncultured men. What an experience! Two of the
three still live. How sweet the rest of the grave will be to them!

The genuine will was destroyed and the "family lawyer," James,
immediately after the funeral, produced and read "the last will and
testament" of the dead woman. The four sisters and a host of poor
relations were present at the reading. When Sarah, Brea's wife, heard
her name read as chief heir of the vast estate, she was stunned, but if
she was stunned, the rest of the family were paralyzed. Legacies were
left to many, small in amount, save in the cas