ted.

"Carter is beside himself. Briggs holds a mortgage of sixteen hundred on
the _Signal_ and he was to let Carter have four hundred more to-day. Now
the loan's called off. He tells me the _Signal_ must suspend publication
if he can't raise the money," Sasnett put in.

"At least he'll sell a few hundred copies extra Saturday if he prints
Sarah Mosely's will," said Acres.

"But if there is no will?"

"What does Briggs say?"

"Oh, Briggs!" laughed Sasnett, "he's as mad as a horsefly that's been
slapped off. He says there is no will. But he doesn't really know. He's
zooning around wondering if he'll be able to light again on the flanks
of the estate."

"Regis made himself rather conspicuous at the funeral to-day--wonder
why," remarked Coleman thoughtfully.

"Whim. Old men like to show up on such occasions. They are next of kin
to funerals, feel their dust shaking on their bones when anybody dies."

"There he comes now!" exclaimed Acres.

The Judge was indeed approaching, walking smartly up the street to the
National Bank Building. He was one of those old men who somehow recall
a cavalry sword, slightly bent, of exceedingly good metal. He retained,
you might say, merely the skin and bones of a splendid countenance. The
skin was brown as parchment, and wrinkled, but the bones were
elegant--Hamlet's skull, not Yorick's. His eyes were perfectly round,
gray below a kind of yellow brilliance, as if an old eagle within looked
out beneath the steel bars of those bristling brows. His nose belonged
to the colonial period of American history. It was an antique, and a
very fine one, well preserved, high bridge, straight, with thin nostrils
which drew up at the corners to hold the singularly patient whimsical
smile in place which his mouth made. All told, the Judge's countenance
was one of those _de luxe_ histories of a gentleman not often seen
outside of the best literature, but sometimes seen in an old Southern
town where some gentleman has also managed to retain the exceeding
honour of being a man as well.

His long black coat-tails clung as close as a scabbard to his thin legs.
He wore a high silk hat and a white carnation in his buttonhole. He
looked neither to the right nor to the left. Apparently he was the one
man in sight who was not concerned about the question of what had become
or would become of the William J. Mosely Estate.

As he approached the Bank Building, a very large red-faced old man with
a white mo