rotten vegetables from sound.

"He will die years before his father," every one remarked, "and then the
gambler's money will go where it ought to go."

There had been a fire next door to the Winkletips about the time the
good news had arrived from Paris; a huge warehouse had burned down,
leaving a brick wall towering sixty feet above the old wooden tenement
in which the brothers did business. They had given notice to the
authorities; but the inspectors had pronounced the wall perfectly safe.
So the two brothers continued to come and go, in their best Sunday
clothes, however, for they were only engaged in settling up the old
business.

Suddenly, without the slightest warning, the huge wall fell with a
terrific crash upon the wooden tenement, crushing it like an egg-shell.
When the two brothers were taken out from the ruins, John was pronounced
dead and a coroner's permit was given to remove him to a neighboring
undertaker's establishment. William lived six hours, conscious to the
last and grateful to an all-wise Providence that his worthless nephew
would now be excluded from any control over the Dingee million.

John Winkletip was a grass widower, his wife, an Englishwoman, having
abandoned him and returned to England, and for many years he had made
his home with his only other child, a widowed daughter, Mrs. Timmins,
who was openly opposed to many of her father's peculiar notions, as she
termed them, one of which was his strong advocacy of cremation; he being
one of the original stockholders and at the time of his death a director
of the Long Island Cremation Society.

Consequently Mrs. Timmins gave orders that immediately after the
coroner's inquest, her father's body should be removed to her residence
in Harlem, but as the officers of the Cremation Society held the
solemnly executed direction and authorization of their late friend and
associate to incinerate his remains, they were advised by the counsel of
their corporation that such an instrument would justify them in taking
possession of the remains at the very earliest moment possible and
removing it to the crematory.

Warned by the undertakers of Mrs. Timmins' threatened interference, they
resolved not to risk even the delay necessary to procure a burial
casket; in fact it would be a useless expense, anyway, and consequently
John Winkletip began his last ride on earth lying in the cool depths of
the undertaker's ice box.

As Mrs. Timmins's cab turned into