sound from about that table, and I heard
one jocular voice sing out:

"Pass it around, Smead. I'll drink to Uncle Anthony out of that bottle
till there isn't a drop left to tell what was in it!"

But the lawyer was in no hurry.

"You have forgotten the letter, for the hearing of which you are called
together. Mr. Anthony Westonhaugh left behind him a letter. The time is
now come for reading it."

As I heard these words and realized that the final toast was to be
delayed and that some few moments must yet elapse before the room would
be cleared and an opportunity given me for obtaining what I needed for
the famishing mother and child, I felt such impatience with the fact
and so much anxiety as to the condition of those I had left behind me
that I questioned whether it would not be better for me to return to
them empty-handed than to leave them so long without the comfort of my
presence, when the fascination of the scene again seized me and I found
myself lingering to mark its conclusion with an avidity which can only
be explained by my sudden and intense consciousness of what it all might
mean to her whose witness I had thus inadvertently become.

The careful lawyer began by quoting the injunction with which this
letter had been put in his hands. "'When they are warm with food and
wine, but not too warm,'--thus his adjuration ran, 'then let them hear
my first and only words to them.' I know you are eager for these words.
Folk so honest, so convinced of their own purity and uprightness that
they can stand unmoved while the youngest and most helpless among them
withdraws her claim to wealth and independence rather than share an
unmerited bounty, such folk, I say, must be eager, must be anxious to
know why they have been made the legatees of so great a fortune, under
the easy conditions and amid such slight restrictions as have been
imposed upon them by their munificent kinsman."

"I had rather go on drinking toasts," babbled one thick voice.

"I had rather finish my figuring," growled another, in whose grating
tones no echo remained of Hector Westonhaugh's formerly honeyed voice.
"I am making out a list of stock--"

"Blast your stock! that is, if you mean horses and cows!" screamed a
third. "I'm going in for city life. With less money than we have got,
Andreas Amsberger got to be alderman--"

"Alderman!" sneered the whole pack; and the tumult became general. "If
more of us had been sick," called out one; "or if U