sharp hand with a damaged character for about £300 a year, and I pay that old Todd quite £2000. There is a vacant place in the Hutches that I could turn into an office. Hang me, if I don't do it. I will make that little chirping grasshopper jump to some purpose, I'll warrant," and he chuckled at the idea.

Just then Mr. Todd returned with the will, and before he could begin to make any explanations his employer cut him short with a sharp order to read the gist of it.

This the lawyer went on to do. It was very short, and, with the exception of a few legacies, amounting in all to about twenty thousand pounds, bequeathed the testator's vast fortune and estates, including his (by far the largest) interest in the great publishing house, and his palace, with the paintings and other valuable contents, known as Pompadour Hall, to his nephew, Eustace H. Meeson.

"Very well," he said, when the reading was finished; now give it to me."

Mr. Todd obeyed, and handed the document to his patron, who deliberately rent it into fragments with his strong fingers, and then completed its destruction by tearing it with his big white teeth. This done, he mixed the little pieces up, threw them on the floor, and stamped upon them with an air of malignity that almost frightened jerky little Mr. Todd.

"Now then," he said grimly, "there's an end of the old love; so let's on with the new. Take your pen and

receive my instructions for my will."

Mr. Todd did as he was told.

"I leave all my property, real and personal, to be divided in equal shares between my two partners, Alfred Tom Addison and Cecil Spooner Roscoe. There, that's

short and sweet, and, one way and another, it means a couple of millions.'

"Good Heavens! sir," jerked out Mr. Todd.

"Why,

do you mean to quite cut out your nephew-and the other legatees?" he added, by way of an afterthought.

"Of course I do; that is, as regards my nephew. The legatees may stand as before."

"Well, all I have to say," went on the little man, astonished into honesty, "is that it is the most shameful thing I ever heard of!"

"Indeed, Mr. Todd, is it? Well, now may I ask you: am I leaving this property or are you ? Don't trouble yourself to answer that, however, but just attend. Either you draw up that will at once, while I wait, or you say good-bye to about £2000 a year; for that's what Meeson's business is worth, I reckon. Now you take your

choice."

Mr. Todd did take his choice. In under an hour the will, which was very short, was drawn and engrossed.

"Now then," said Meeson, addressing himself to Mr. Todd and the managing clerk, as he took the quill between his fingers to sign, "do you two bear in mind that at the moment I execute this will I am of sound mind, memory, and understanding. There you are; now do you two

witness."

It was night, and King Capital, in the shape of Mr. Meeson, sat alone at dinner in his palatial dining-room at Pompadour. Dinner was over. The powdered footmen had departed with stately tread, and the head butler was just placing the decanters of richly coloured wine before this solitary lord of all. The dinner had been a melancholy failure. Dish after dish, the cost of any one of which

would have fed a poor child for a month, had been brought up and handed to the master only to be found fault with and sent away. On that night Mr. Meeson had no

appetite.

"Johnston," he said to the butler, when he was sure the footmen could not hear him, "has Mr. Eustace been here?"

"Yes, sir."

"Has he gone?"

"Yes, sir. He came to fetch his things, and then went away in a cab."

"Where to?"

"I don't know, sir. He told the man to drive to Birmingham."

"Did he leave any message?"

"Yes, sir; he bade me say that you should not be troubled with him again; but that he was sorry that you had parted from him in anger."

"Why did you not give me that message before?"

"Because Mr. Eustace said I was not to give it unless you asked after him."

"Very good. Johnston!"

"Yes, sir."

"You will give orders that Mr. Eustace's name is not to be mentioned in this house again. Any servant mentioning Mr. Eustace's name will be dismissed."

"Very good, sir;" and Johnston went.

Mr. Meeson gazed round him. He looked at the long array of glass and silver, at the spotless napery and costly flowers. He looked at the walls hung with works of art, which, whatever else they might be, were at least expensive; at the mirrors and the soft wax-lights; at the marble mantelpieces and the bright warm fires (for it was