anything for it."

"Don't you worry about me, Anne," said George stoutly.

"Just the same, you should take care of yourself," said Braden. "Pneumonia
gets after you big fellows, you know. How are you, Wade? Poor old Wade,
you must miss my grandfather terribly. You knew him before I was born. It
seems an age, now that I think of it in that way."

"Thirty-three years, sir," said Wade. "Nearly ten years longer than
Murray, Mr. Braden, It does seem an age."

The will was not a lengthy document. The reading took no more than three
minutes, and for another full minute after its conclusion, not a person in
the room uttered a word. A sort of stupefaction held them all in its
grip,--that is, all except the old lawyer who was putting away his glasses
and waiting for the outburst that was sure to follow.

In the first place, Mr. Thorpe remembered Anne. After declaring that she
had been satisfactorily provided for in a previous document, known to her
as a contract, he bequeathed to her the house in which she had lived for a
single year with him. All of its contents went with this bequest. To
Josiah Wade he left the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars, to Edward
Murray ten thousand dollars, and to each of the remaining servants in his
household a sum equal to half of their earnings while in his service.
There were bequests to his lawyer, his doctor and his secretary, besides
substantial gifts to persons who could not by any chance have expected
anything from this grim old man,--such as the friendly doorman at his
favourite club, and the man who had been delivering newspapers to him for
a score of years or more, and the old negro bootblack who had attended him
at the Brevoort in the days before the Italian monopoly set in, and the
two working-girls who supported the invalid widow of a man who had gone to
prison and died there after having robbed the Thorpe estate of a great
many thousands of dollars while acting as a confidential and trusted
agent.

Then came the astounding disposition of the fortune that had accumulated
in the time of Templeton Thorpe. There were no bequests outright to
charity, contrary to all expectations. The listeners were prepared to hear
of huge gifts to certain institutions and societies known to have been
favoured by the testator. Various hospitals were looked upon as sure to
receive splendid endowments, and specific colleges devoted to the
advancement of medical and surgical science were also regarded