rable to it, either by
contesting the capacity of the testator or otherwise, to safeguard
the interests of the infant. As it is, knowing that the testator was
a gentleman of the highest intelligence and acumen, and that he has
absolutely no relations living to whom he could have confided the
guardianship of the child, we do not feel justified in taking this
course.

"Awaiting such instructions as you please to send us as regards
the delivery of the infant and the payment of the proportion of the
dividends due to you,

"We remain, Sir, faithfully yours,

"Geoffrey and Jordan.

"Horace L. Holly, Esq."

I put down the letter, and ran my eye through the Will, which appeared,
from its utter unintelligibility, to have been drawn on the strictest
legal principles. So far as I could discover, however, it exactly bore
out what my friend Vincey had told me on the night of his death. So
it was true after all. I must take the boy. Suddenly I remembered the
letter which Vincey had left with the chest. I fetched and opened it.
It only contained such directions as he had already given to me as to
opening the chest on Leo's twenty-fifth birthday, and laid down the
outlines of the boy's education, which was to include Greek, the higher
Mathematics, and _Arabic_. At the end there was a postscript to the
effect that if the boy died under the age of twenty-five, which,
however, he did not believe would be the case, I was to open the chest,
and act on the information I obtained if I saw fit. If I did not see
fit, I was to destroy all the contents. On no account was I to pass them
on to a stranger.

As this letter added nothing material to my knowledge, and certainly
raised no further objection in my mind to entering on the task I had
promised my dead friend to undertake, there was only one course open
to me--namely, to write to Messrs. Geoffrey and Jordan, and express my
acceptance of the trust, stating that I should be willing to commence
my guardianship of Leo in ten days' time. This done I went to the
authorities of my college, and, having told them as much of the story
as I considered desirable, which was not very much, after considerable
difficulty succeeded in persuading them to stretch a point, and, in the
event of my having obtained a fellowship, which I was pretty certain
I had done, allow me to have the child to live with me. Their consent,
however, was only granted on the condition that I vacated my rooms
in college an