The Man from Brodney's. George Barr McCutcheon

enough to describe his attitude at that perilous moment.

      "What shall I do—what can I do, Mr. Bowen?" he gasped, bewildered.

      "Consult an attorney," advised Mr. Bowen promptly.

      "I'll do it," shouted "Bobby" Browne, one time halfback on his college eleven. "Break the will for me, Mr. Bowen, and I'll give—"

      "I can't break it, Bobby. I'm its executor."

      "Good Lord! Well, then, who is the best will-breaker you know, please? Something has to be done right away."

      "I'm afraid you don't grasp the situation. Now if you were not married it would—"

      "I wouldn't give up my wife for all the islands in the universe. That's settled. You don't know how happy we are. She's the—"

      "Yes, 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 to love a person in less time and still retain your mental balance, you know, especially if she were pretty and an heiress to half your own fortune. I daresay that is what they were thinking about."

      "Thinking? They weren't thinking of anything at all. They weren't capable. Why didn't they consider the possibility that things might turn out just as they have?"

      "Possibly they did consider it, my boy. It looks to me as if they did not care a rap whether it went to their blood relatives or to the islanders. I fancy of the two they loved the islanders more. At any rate, they left a beautiful opening for the very complications which now conspire to give the natives their own, after all. There may be some sort of method in their badness. More than likely they concluded to let luck decide the matter."

      "Well, I guess it has, all right."

      "Don't lose heart. It's worth fighting for even if you lose. I'd hate to see those islanders get all of it, even if you two can't marry each other. I've thought it over pretty thoroughly and I've reached a conclusion. It's necessary for both of you to be on the ground according to schedule. You must go to the island, wife or no wife, and there's not much time to be lost. Lady Deppingham won't let the grass grow under her feet if I know anything about the needs of English nobility, and I'll bet my hat she's packing her trunks now for a long stay in Japat. You have farther to go than she, but you must get over there inside of sixty days. I daresay your practice can take care of itself," ironically. Browne nodded cheerfully. "You can't tell what may happen in the next six months."

      "What do you mean?"

      "Well, it's possible that you may become a widower and she a wid—"

      "Good heaven, Judge Garrett! Impossible!" gasped Bobby Browne, clutching the arms of his chair.

      "Nothing is impossible, my boy—"

      "Well, if that's what you're counting on you can count me out, I won't speculate on my wife's death."

      "But, man, suppose that it did happen!" roared the judge irascibly. "You should be prepared for the best—I mean the worst. Don't look like a sick dog. We've got to watch every corner, that's all, and be Johnny-on-the-spot when the time comes. You go to the island at once. Take your wife along if you like. You'll find her ladyship there, and she'll need a woman to tell her troubles to. I'll have the papers ready for you to sign in three days, and I don't think we'll have any trouble getting the British heirs to join in the suit to overthrow the will. The only point is this: the islanders must not have the advantage that your absence from Japat will give to them. Now, I'll----"

      "But, good Lord, Judge Garrett, I can't go to that confounded island," wailed Browne. "Take my wife over among those heathenish----"

      "Do you expect me to handle this case for you, sir?"

      "Sure."

      "Then let me handle it. Don't interfere. When you start in to get somebody else's money you have to do a good many things you don't like, no matter whether you are a lawyer or a client."

      "But I don't like the suggestion that my wife will be obliged to die in order----"

      "Please leave all the details to me, Mr. Browne. It may not be necessary for her to die. There are other alternatives in law. Give the lawyers a chance. We'll see what we can do. Besides, it would be unreasonable to expect his lordship to die also. All you have to do is to plant yourself on that island and stay there until we tell you to get off."

      "Or the islanders push me off," lugubriously.

      "Now, listen intently and I'll tell you just what you are to do."

      Young Mr. Browne went away at dusk, half reeling under the responsibility of existence, and eventually reached the side of the anxious young woman uptown. He bared the facts and awaited the wail of dismay.

      "I think it will be perfectly jolly," she cried, instead, and kissed him rapturously.

      Over on the opposite side of the Atlantic the excitement in certain circles was even more intense than that produced in Boston. Lord Deppingham needed the money, but he was a whole day in grasping the fact that his wife could not have it and him at the same time. The beautiful and fashionable Lady Deppingham, once little Agnes Ruthven, came as near to having hysteria as Englishwomen ever do, but she called in a lawyer instead of a doctor. For three days she neglected her social duties (and they were many), ignored her gallant admirers (and they were many), and hurried back and forth between home and chambers so vigorously that his lordship was seldom closer than a day behind in anything she did.

      There was a great rattling of trunks, a jangling of keys, a thousand good-byes, a cast-off season, and the Deppinghams were racing away for the island of Japat somewhere in the far South Seas.