id="page_7"/>7 been waiting. His face hardened, and he shoved back his chair a little.

“I am not able to find any provision in the will relating to that,” he answered.

“Eh? But what the deuce––”

For a moment Don stared open-mouthed at the lawyer. Then he reached in his pocket for his cigarettes, selected one with some deliberation, and tapped an end upon the case.

“You said Dad had considerable sentiment,” he observed. “It strikes me he has shown more humor than sentiment.”

Barton was still aggressive. To tell the truth, he expected some suggestion as to the possibility of breaking the will; but if ever he had drawn a paper all snug and tight, it was the one in question.

“Damme,” Pendleton, Sr., had said. “Damme, Barton, if the lad is able to break the will, I’ll rise in my grave and haunt you the rest of your days.”

If the boy wished to test the issue, Barton was ready for him. But the boy’s thoughts seemed to be on other things.

“I suppose,” mused Pendleton, Jr., “I suppose 8 it was that freshman scrape that worried him.”

“I was not informed of that,” replied Barton.

“It made good reading,” the young man confided. “But, honest, it was not so bad as the papers made it out. Dad was a good sport about it, anyhow. He cleared it up and let me go on.”

“If you will allow me to advance an opinion,––a strictly personal opinion,––it is that Mr. Pendleton devised the entire will with nothing else but your welfare in mind. He had a good deal of pride, and desired above all things to have you retain the family home. If I remember correctly, he said you were the last lineal descendant.”

Don nodded pleasantly.

“The last. Kind of looks as if he wanted me to remain the last.”

“On the contrary,” ventured Barton, “I think he hoped you might marry and––”

“Marry?” broke in Don. “Did you say marry?”

“I even understood, from a conversation with your father just before his death, that 9 you––er––were even then engaged. Am I mistaken?”

“No; that’s true enough. But say––look here.”

The young man reached in his pocket and brought forth a handful of crumpled bills and loose change. He counted it carefully.

“Twelve dollars and sixty-three cents,” he announced. “What do you think Frances Stuyvesant will say to that?”

Barton refrained from advancing an opinion.

“What do you think Morton H. Stuyvesant will say?” demanded Don.

No point of law being involved in the query, Jonas Barton still refrained.

“What do you think Mrs. Morton H. Stuyvesant will say, and all the uncles and aunties and nephews and nieces?”

“Not being their authorized representative, I am not prepared to answer,” Barton replied. “However, I think I can tell you what your father would do under these circumstances.”

“What?” inquired Don.

“He would place all the facts in the case 10 before the girl, then before her father, and learn just what they had to say.”

“Wrong. He wouldn’t go beyond the girl,” answered Don.

He replaced the change in his pocket.

“Ah,” he sighed––“them were the happy days.”

“If I remember correctly,” continued Jonas Barton thoughtfully, “twelve dollars and sixty-three cents was fully as much as your father possessed when he asked your mother to marry him. That was just after he lost his ship off Hatteras.”

“Yes, them were the happy days,” nodded Don. “But, at that, Dad had his nerve with him.”

“He did,” answered Barton. “He had his nerve with him always.”