d a scholar.

"Yes, of course," he nodded. "That's what you are here for. But beyond
that?"

"Nothing," I replied. "I am following my instructions from Mr.
Benham. They go no further than that."

He frowned into the fire.

"That's all very well as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.
Jerry is now eighteen. Do you realize that in three years he comes
into possession of five million dollars, an income of over two hundred
thousand a year; and that in seven years, at twenty-five, the
executors must relinquish the entire estate?"

I had not thought of the imminence of this disaster.

"I was not aware, Mr. Ballard," I said. "At the present moment Jerry
doesn't know a dollar from a nickel."

He opened his eyes wide and examined me as though he feared he had not
heard correctly or as though it were blasphemy, heresy that I was
uttering.

"You mean that he doesn't know the value and uses of money?"

"So far as I am aware," I replied coolly, "he has never seen a piece
of money in his life."

"All wrong, all wrong, Canby. This won't do at all. He had his
arithmetic, percentage and so forth?"

"Yes. But money doesn't interest him. Can you see any reason why it
should?"

Again the frown and level gaze.

"And what had you planned for him?" he asked. He did not intend to be
satirical perhaps. He was merely worldly.

"I thought when the time came he might be permitted to choose a
vocation for himself. In the meanwhile--"

"A vocation!" he snapped. "Isn't the controlling interest in a
transcontinental line of railroad vocation enough? To say nothing of
coal, copper and iron mines, a steel mill or two and a fleet of
steamers?"

He overpowered me for the moment. I had not thought of Jerry as being
all these things. To me he was merely Jerry. But I struggled upward
through the miasma of oppressive millions and met the issue squarely.

"There is nothing in John Benham's advice which directs any vocational
instruction," I said staunchly. "I was to bring the boy to the age of
manhood without realization of sin."

"A dream, Canby. Utopian, impossible!"

"It has not proved so," I replied, nettled. "I am merely following
instructions, Mr. Benham's instructions through you to me. The dream
is very real to Jerry."

Mr. Ballard gazed into the fire and smiled.

"The executors are permitted some license in this matter. We are
entirely satisfied with your work. We have no desire to modify in the
slightest degree