s own in this case, for
in the face of lawyer Tresidder's objections and his wife's entreaties
he stood firm. The clause was to this effect--that if Jasper Pennington
or his heirs were ever in a position so to do, they could demand to buy
the Pennington estates, as they existed at the date of the will, at half
the value of the said estates. And that in the case of such an
emergency, five representatives of five county families be asked to make
the valuation. My grandfather further stipulated that none of the
Pennington lands should be sold at any time for any purpose whatever.

Now, the widow of Tresidder greatly objected to this, and even after it
was duly signed did her utmost to get my grandfather to have this clause
expunged. But the Pennington blood asserted itself, and although he had
given way to his wife in such a degree that he had almost disinherited
his son, he still held to this clause.

Not that it could be worth anything to my father. How could he, with
only L500, expect to gain many thousands?

As I said, the will was made some few months before my father was
twenty-one, and it was stipulated that he was to receive the L500 on his
twenty-first birthday.

And now comes a stranger part of the business. About a week before my
father came of age, my grandfather grew angry at what he had done. The
thought of his only son being disinherited in favour of a stranger just
because a woman had twisted him around her finger made him nearly mad.
He saw now what his wife had been aiming at for years; he saw, too, that
the quarrels he had had with my father were of his wife's making; and
anxious to do justly, he wrote a letter to Mr. Trefry telling him that
he desired his presence at Pennington, as he wanted to make a new will,
which should be duly signed and sealed before his son Jasper's
twenty-first birthday. This letter was given to a servant to take to
Truro. Now this servant, like almost every one else she had in the
house, had become a tool of the solicitor's widow, and there is every
reason to believe she saw the letter. Be that as it may, before Lawyer
Trefry reached Pennington, my grandfather, who the day previous had been
a hale, strong man, was dead, and the doctor who was called said that he
died of heart disease.

My father, however, believed that his father had been poisoned, or in
some other way killed, because the woman he had married feared that he
would make a new will in favour of his son Jasper