e more like
your father than you suspect as yet, Artie. I should have said nothing
to you if you hadn't forced your confidence on me. What I've said is
only what you'd say to me, were I in your place and you in mine--what
you'll think yourself a month from now. What lawyer advised you to
undertake the contest?"

"Dawson of Mitchell, Dawson, Vance & Bischoffsheimer. As good lawyers as
there are in the country."

"I ought to tell you," said Dory, after brief hesitation, "that Judge
Torrey calls them a quartette of unscrupulous scoundrels--says they're
regarded as successful only because success has sunk to mean supremacy in
cheating and double-dealing. Would you mind telling me what terms they
gave you--about fee and expenses?"

"A thousand down, and a note for five thousand," replied Arthur,
compelled to speech by the misgivings Dory was raising within him in
spite of himself.

"That is, as the first installment, they take about all the money in
sight. Does that look as if they believed in the contest?"

At this Arthur remembered and understood Dawson's remark, apparently
casual, but really crucial, about the necessity of attaching Dr. Schulze.
Without Schulze, he had no case; and Dawson had told him so! What kind of
a self-hypnotized fool was he, not to hear the plainest warnings? And
without waiting to see Schulze, he had handed over his money!

"I know you think I am not unprejudiced about this will," Dory went on.
"But I ask you to have a talk with Judge Torrey. While he made the will,
it was at your father's command, and he didn't and doesn't approve it. He
knows all the circumstances. Before you go any further, wouldn't it be
well to see him? You know there isn't an abler lawyer, and you also know
he's honest. If there's any way of breaking the will, he'll tell you
about it."

Hiram Ranger's son now had the look of his real self emerging from the
subsiding fumes of his debauch of folly and fury. "Thank you, Hargrave,"
he said. "You are right."

"Go straight off," advised Dory. "Go before you've said anything to your
mother about what you intend to do. And please let me say one thing more.
Suppose you do finally decide to make this contest. It means a year, two
years, three years, perhaps five or six, perhaps ten or more, of
suspense, of degrading litigation, with the best of you shriveling, with
your abilities to do for yourself paralyzed. If you finally lose--you'll
owe those Chicago sharks an enormous s