een made aware of the conditions under
which he was to succeed to the Gilson estate he would indubitably have
declined the responsibility. Briefly stated, the purport of the codicil
was as follows:

Whereas, at divers times and in sundry places, certain persons had
asserted that during his life the testator had robbed their sluice
boxes; therefore, if during the five years next succeeding the date of
this instrument any one should make proof of such assertion before a
court of law, such person was to receive as reparation the entire
personal and real estate of which the testator died seized and
possessed, minus the expenses of court and a stated compensation to the
executor, Henry Clay Brentshaw; provided, that if more than one person
made such proof the estate was to be equally divided between or among
them. But in case none should succeed in so establishing the testator's
guilt, then the whole property, minus court expenses, as aforesaid,
should go to the said Henry Clay Brentshaw for his own use, as stated in
the will.

The syntax of this remarkable document was perhaps open to critical
objection, but that was clearly enough the meaning of it. The
orthography conformed to no recognized system, but being mainly phonetic
it was not ambiguous. As the probate judge remarked, it would take five
aces to beat it. Mr. Brentshaw smiled good-humoredly, and after
performing the last sad rites with amusing ostentation, had himself duly
sworn as executor and conditional legatee under the provisions of a law
hastily passed (at the instance of the member from the Mammon Hill
district) by a facetious legislature; which law was afterward discovered
to have created also three or four lucrative offices and authorized the
expenditure of a considerable sum of public money for the construction
of a certain railway bridge that with greater advantage might perhaps
have been erected on the line of some actual railway.

Of course Mr. Brentshaw expected neither profit from the will nor
litigation in consequence of its unusual provisions; Gilson, although
frequently "flush," had been a man whom assessors and tax collectors
were well satisfied to lose no money by. But a careless and merely
formal search among his papers revealed title deeds to valuable estates
in the East and certificates of deposit for incredible sums in banks
less severely scrupulous than that of Mr. Jo. Bentley.

The astounding news got abroad directly, throwing the Hill