y squeezing into
heaven, I can tell you. And I fixed him all right. Ha, ha! I told him as
long as the money wouldn't do me and Mother any more good I'd settle it
so's it couldn't benefit any one else. And that's exactly what I've done.
Left it all for a monument for us, fancy marble, carved statues, and the
whole outfit. It'll beat that toadstool-looking tomb of that prince
somewhere in Asia all hollow. Ha, ha!"

He leaned back to enjoy to the full this humorous legacy to himself, but
the expression of Sheila's face checked it. "Say, boss, you don't like
what I've done, do you? Run it out and dump it; I can stand for straight
talk from you."

Sheila felt repelled even more than she had at first. To have a man at the
point of death throw his money into a heap of marble just to keep it from
doing good to any one seemed horrible. And yet the man spoke so
consistently for himself. He had lived in the flesh and for the flesh all
his days; it was not strange that there was no spirit to interpret now for
him or to give him the courage to be generous in the face of what the
world would think.

"It's yours to spend as you like--only--I hate monuments. Rather have the
plain green grass over me. And don't you think it's queer yourself that a
man who had the grit to make himself and a pile of money hasn't the grit
to leave it invested after he goes, instead of burying it? Supposing you
can't live and use it yourself! That's no reason for not letting your
money live after you. I'd want to keep my money alive."

"Alive? Say, what do you mean?"

"Just what I say--alive. Charity isn't the only way to dispose of it.
Leave it to science to discover something new with; give it to the
laboratories to study up typhoid or cancer. Ever think how little we know
about them?"

"Why should I? I don't owe anything to science."

"Yes, you do. What developed the need of coal--what gave you the
facilities for removing it from your mines? Don't tell me you or anybody
else doesn't owe something to science."

"Bosh!" And the argument ended there.

The old man had a good night. He dozed as peacefully as if he had not
required propping up and occasional hypodermics to keep his lungs and
heart going properly, and when the house doctor made his early rounds this
sad and shocking spectacle met his eye: the dying coal magnate, arrayed
in a fresh and more vivid suit of heliotrope pajamas, smoking a brierwood
and keeping a violent emotional pace with