"You must know he had a cousin named Warming a solitary man without
children, who made a big fortune speculating in roads--the first
Eadhamite roads. But surely you've heard? No? Why? He bought all the
patent rights and made a big company. In those days there were grosses
of grosses of separate businesses and business companies. Grosses of
grosses! His roads killed the railroads--the old things--in two dozen
years; he bought up and Eadhamited' the tracks. And because he didn't
want to break up his great property or let in shareholders, he left it
all to the Sleeper, and put it under a Board of Trustees that he had
picked and trained. He knew then the Sleeper wouldn't wake, that he
would go on sleeping, sleeping till he died. He knew that quite well!
And plump! a man in the United States, who had lost two sons in a boat
accident, followed that up with another great bequest. His trustees
found themselves with a dozen myriads of lions'-worth or more of
property at the very beginning."

"What was his name?"

"Graham."

"No, I mean--that American's."

"Isbister."

"Isbister!" cried Graham. "Why, I don't even know the name."

"Of course not," said the old man. "Of course not. People don't learn
much in the schools nowadays. But I know all about him. He was a rich
American who went from England, and he left the Sleeper even more than
Warming. How he made it? That I don't know. Something about pictures by
machinery. But he made it and left it, and so the Council had its start.
It was just a council of trustees at first."

"And how did it grow?"

"Eh!--but you're not up to things. Money attracts money--and twelve
brains are better than one. They played it cleverly. They worked
politics with money, and kept on adding to the money by working currency
and tariffs. They grew--they grew. And for years the twelve trustees
hid the growing of the Sleeper's estate, under double names and company
titles and all that. The Council spread by title deed, mortgage, share,
every political party, every newspaper, they bought. If you listen to
the old stories you will see the Council growing and growing Billions
and billions of lions at last--the Sleeper's estate. And all growing
out of a whim--out of this Warming's will, and an accident to Isbister's
sons.

"Men are strange," said the old man. "The strange, thing to me is how
the Council worked together so long. As many as twelve. But they worked
in cliques from the first. And th