affection which Mr
William Taylor had bestowed upon his wife, Dick Maitland was within
three months of his eighteenth birthday, a fine, tall, fairly good-
looking, and athletic specimen of the young public-school twentieth-
century Englishman. He was an only son; and his mother was a widow, her
husband having died when Dick was a sturdy little toddler a trifle over
three years of age. Mrs Maitland had been left quite comfortably off,
her husband having accumulated a sufficient sum to bring her in an
income of close upon seven hundred pounds per annum. The provisions of
Mr Maitland's will stipulated that the income arising from his
carefully chosen investments was to be enjoyed by his widow during her
lifetime, subject to the proper maintenance and education of their only
son, Dick; and upon the demise of Mrs Maitland the capital was to go to
Dick, to be employed by the latter as he might deem fit. But a clause
in the will stipulated that at the close of his school career Dick was
to be put to such business or profession as the lad might choose, Mr
Maitland pithily remarking that he did not believe in drones. But since
Mrs Maitland, although a most excellent woman in every respect, had no
head for business, her husband appointed honest old John Cuthbertson,
his own and his father's solicitor, sole executor of his will; and so
died happily, in the full conviction that he had done everything that
was humanly possible to assure the future welfare of his widow and
infant son. And faithfully had John Cuthbertson discharged his trust,
until in the fullness of years he had laid down the burden of life, and
his son Jonas had come to reign in the office in his father's stead.
This event had occurred some three years previously, about the time when
Dick, having completed his school life, had elected to take up the study
of medicine and surgery.

This important step had involved many interviews between Mrs Maitland
and "Mr Jonas", as the clerks in his father's office had learned to
call him; for the said Mr Jonas had succeeded to the executorship of
many wills--Mr Maitland's among them--as well as the other portions of
his father's business; and so great had been the zeal and interest that
he had displayed during the necessary negotiations, that Mrs Maitland
had been most favourably impressed. Indeed Jonas Cuthbertson had
honestly earned the very high opinion that Mrs Maitland had formed of
him, displaying not only interest