e following year
Hetty, the eldest, died of Roman fever, and six months later Prudence
fell a victim to rat poison in a small hotel at Grasse, City of
Delightful Odors, in the south of France, whither she had gone in search
of balmy air for her sister Martha, who had suddenly developed symptoms
of consumption.

Left thus alone in the world with old Dingee's million and an incurable
ailment, Martha's only ambition was to reach Bricksburg and die in the
old white Delury mansion. It seemed to her that its great spacious rooms
would enable her to breathe more easily and to fight death off for
possibly another year.

But it was not to be. She got as far as Paris when old Dingee's million
again changed hands, going this time by will to Martha's only relatives,
twin brothers, John and William Winkletip, produce dealers in Washington
street, New York.

The will was a peculiar one, as was to be expected:

I give, devise, and bequeath all the property popularly known as
the "Dingee Million" to my cousins John and William Winkletip,
produce dealers of New York, as joint tenants for their lives and
the life of each of them, with remainder over to the eldest son of
the survivor, his heirs and assigns forever; provided, that said
remainder man shall be of full age at the time of his father's
decease, and shall thereupon enter the ministry of the Methodist
Episcopal Church and devote his life and the income of this estate
to the encouragement of legislative enactment throughout the United
States for the suppression of gambling and wager laying.

In default of such male heir, the Dingee million was to be divided up
among certain religious and eleemosynary institutions.

When the cablegram from Paris informing them of their extraordinary luck
reached the Winkletip Brothers, they were down in the cellar of the old
tenement which served as their place of business, with their long jean
coats on, busily engaged in sorting onions. As the Winkletips were only
a little past fifty, and as strong as hickory knobs, their families were
quite satisfied to get only a life estate in the Dingee million, for,
barring accidents, the brothers had twenty-five or thirty years to live
yet.

True, Brother John had a son, Cyrus, who would soon be of age, but he
was a worthless wight, whose normal condition was alcoholic stupor,
barely characterized with sufficient lucidity to enable him to
distinguish