firmness would strengthen his position still more, and he was so rash
as to denounce the attorney as a shyster and blackmailer.

The attorney's blood was up; he frightened the sisters into supporting
him in disputing the will, and had Brea and his wife ousted from the
house and the sisters reinstalled. Brea then attempted negotiations with
the attorney. Cautious as he was, he said enough to convince the lawyer
that for some reason he did not want the case to come before the courts;
still the attorney was half inclined to join hands with Brea. In the
mean time Ezra (this was the name of the man of law) had acquired great
power over the sisters, and they all looked to him both as champion and
protector. He resolved to be protector to one, at least, paying
assiduous court to Jane, the youngest. Although past 30 and without
education or accomplishments, she was warm-hearted and extremely
sentimental, and a thrill went through her tender heart when it became
evident that Ezra's attention pointed at her. She quickly made him a
hero, and invested the thin-shanked, narrow-chested, waspish attorney
with a thousand tender attributes, and when, after one month's
acquaintance, she found herself alone with him in the poky little parlor
and he asking her to be his wife, her woman's heart overflowed, and
telling him she had loved him from the first hour they met she threw
herself into his arms, crying she was the happiest and most favored
woman in the world. In the midst of the happy lovers' talk she ran to
the shelf, took down a book, and, opening it, revealed a soiled sheet
of paper and asked her lover what it was. His love had given him a gift,
indeed. His trained eye recognized it at once as a draft of a new will,
in the handwriting of the deceased mother, and dated the very night of
her death. It was a rough draft, but across the bottom was drawn the
bold, masculine signature of the old lady. There were no signatures of
witnesses, but Ezra was lawyer enough to know it would stand and that it
revoked all previous wills. Calling in the two elder sisters he read the
will to their amazed ears, and then and there wrote out a full statement
as to the circumstance under which it was found. All four attached their
signatures to the document, and when Ezra kissed his love a tender good
night and went home, he hardly felt the paving stones under his feet,
for he had carefully tucked away in the inside pocket of his vest, just
over his hear