, yes, I know," interrupted the wily Mr. Bowen. "Don't tell me about
it. She's a stumbling block, however, even though we are agreed that
she's a most delightful one. Your co-legatee also possesses a block,
perhaps not so delicate, but I daresay she feels the same about hers as
you do about yours. I can't advise you, my boy. Go and see Judge Garrett
over in the K---- building. They say he expects to come back from the
grave to break his own will."

Ten minutes later an excited young man rushed into an office in the
K---- building. Two minutes afterward he was laying the case before that
distinguished old counsellor, Judge Abner Garrett.

"You will have to fight it jointly," said Judge Garrett, after
extracting the wheat from the chaff of Browne's remarks. "You can't take
hers away from her and she can't get yours. We must combine against the
natives. Come back to-morrow at two."

Promptly at two Browne appeared, eager-eyed and nervous. He had left
behind him at home a miserable young woman with red eyes and choking
breath who bemoaned the cruel conviction that she stood between him and
fortune.

"But hang it all, dearest, I wouldn't marry that girl if I had the
chance. I'd marry you all over again to-day if I could," he had cried
out to her, but she wondered all afternoon if he really meant it. It
never entered her head to wonder if Lady Deppingham was old or young,
pretty or ugly, bright or dull. She had been Mrs. Browne for three
months and she could not quite understand how she had been so happy up
to this sickening hour.

Judge Garrett had a copy of the will in his hand. He looked dubious,
even dismayed.

"It's as sound as the rock of Gibraltar," he announced dolefully.

"You don't mean it!" gasped poor Bobby, mopping his fine Harvard brow,
his six feet of manhood shrinking perceptibly as he looked about for a
chair in which to collapse. "C--can't it be smashed?"

"It might be an easy matter to prove either of these old gentlemen to
have been insane, but the two of them together make it out of the
question----"

"Darned unreasonable."

"What do you mean, sir?" indignantly.

"I mean--oh, you know what I mean. The conditions and all that. Why, the
old chumps must have been trying to prove their grandchildren insane
when they made that will. Nobody but imbeciles would marry people they'd
never seen. I----"

"But the will provides for a six months' courtship, Dr. Browne, I'm
sorry to say. You might learn