tutions, and scholarships, and
libraries, and I have come to this conclusion at last,"--he fixed his eyes
on my face,--"that I will find some young fellow, ambitious, pure-minded,
and poor, healthy in body and healthy in mind, and, in short, make him my
heir, give him all that I have." He repeated, "Give him all that I have.
So that he will suddenly be lifted out of all the trouble and struggle in
which his sympathies have been educated, to freedom and influence."

I tried to seem disinterested. With a transparent hypocrisy I said, "And
you want my help, my professional services maybe, to find that person."

He smiled, and looked at me over his cigarette, and I laughed at his quiet
exposure of my modest pretence.

"What a career such a man might have!" he said. "It fills me with envy to
think how I have accumulated that another man may spend----

"But there are conditions, of course, burdens to be imposed. He must, for
instance, take my name. You cannot expect everything without some return.
And I must go into all the circumstances of his life before I can accept
him. He _must_ be sound. I must know his heredity, how his parents
and grandparents died, have the strictest inquiries made into his private
morals."

This modified my secret congratulations a little.

"And do I understand," said I, "that I----"

"Yes," he said, almost fiercely. "You. _You_."

I answered never a word. My imagination was dancing wildly, my innate
scepticism was useless to modify its transports. There was not a particle
of gratitude in my mind--I did not know what to say nor how to say it.
"But why me in particular?" I said at last.

He had chanced to hear of me from Professor Haslar; he said, as a
typically sound and sane young man, and he wished, as far as possible, to
leave his money where health and integrity were assured.

That was my first meeting with the little old man. He was mysterious about
himself; he would not give his name yet, he said, and after I had answered
some questions of his, he left me at the Blavitiski portal. I noticed that
he drew a handful of gold coins from his pocket when it came to paying for
the lunch. His insistence upon bodily health was curious. In accordance
with an arrangement we had made I applied that day for a life policy in
the Loyal Insurance Company for a large sum, and I was exhaustively
overhauled by the medical advisers of that company in the subsequent week.
Even that did not satisfy him, an