like the other two of us, we could see that even when we
were children. He was quicker and more clever than we, and he was
better, or at least wiser, at holding his tongue and keeping his
temper when the occasion served. But the key to his whole character
was that he could never see any possession in the hands of another
without instinctively wishing to have it for himself. I have seen him
move heaven and earth to get something that he did not really want,
merely because it seemed of value when it belonged to some one else.
There was no one more clever than he at acquiring what he desired.

"Felix Brighton prospered greatly, but he never moved out of the
comfortable farmhouse of which we were all so fond. It became very
beautiful under his hands, extended and improved and filled with the
rarest treasures of his gathering. He was especially fond of pictures,
so that there was a wealth of portraits and landscapes that he had
collected or inherited, that glowed like jewels on the mellow old
walls. He did us unnumbered kindnesses when we were boys, and when, on
growing up, we decided that we would all three be lawyers, he set us
up as partners, Peyton, Crawford & Brighton. We felt very important
with our law books, our profound knowledge, our newly painted sign and
very little else. Even while we were studying, it was plain that
Anthony, in his erratic, changeable way, was the cleverest of us all.

"And then history repeated itself, as it so often does. The grandson
of Martin Hallowell and the two great-grandsons of Reuben fell out
with each other over just such a questionable enterprise as had
wrecked a partnership a hundred years ago. I can see him now as he
came hurrying into our office that day full of the plan for his great
scheme--just a quibble of the law and the thing was done. We were all
to be made rich and successful by it, he explained. There is no use in
describing to you the intricacies of his idea; it was one of those
shoal waters in which the honesty of young lawyers can sometimes come
to grief. The pursuit of law will winnow out the true from the false;
it makes an upright man a hundred times more certain and more proud of
his honor: it searches out the small, weak places of a meaner man's
soul.

"Anthony tried to make this project sound quite simple and
straightforward, but I can remember how narrowly he watched us and
how, when he attempted to laugh at our objections, his voice cracked
into shrill fal