The $5,000 we gave James eased up matters for a time. Practice he had none, but managed to hold on in the hope of realizing on the Brea will matter, but getting deeper and deeper in debt. One night, four years later, the old lady, Brea's mother-in-law, had a more than usually furious outbreak of temper, and fell to beating the three daughters still living with her. Before it was over she had attacked and seriously injured the eldest, and then flew to her room in a passion. Not appearing at breakfast the next morning her daughter went to her room, but she was not there, and the bed was undisturbed. Going to the room that served for office and library, they found the door, as usual, locked. Bursting it open the poor old maids found their mother huddled in a corner of the room dead. Truly a happy relief for the daughters. Poor girls, theirs had been a hard life. Every suitor who tried to cultivate their acquaintance had been driven from the door by the mother, who never spent a dollar on their education, and her death found them all unused to the ways of the world. The result was that all became victims of fortune-hunters, and the unhappy ladies only changed the tyranny of an unnatural mother for the tyranny of a husband, who in each case wedded for wealth alone, and all three husbands were uncultured men. What an experience! Two of the three still live. How sweet the rest of the grave will be to them! The genuine will was destroyed and the "family lawyer," James, immediately after the funeral, produced and read "the last will and testament" of the dead woman. The four sisters and a host of poor relations were present at the reading. When Sarah, Brea's wife, heard her name read as chief heir of the vast estate, she was stunned, but if she was stunned, the rest of the family were paralyzed. Legacies were left to many, small in amount, save in the case of the other three sisters, who were to have a certain tenement and land in Harlem and three thousand a year for life out of the estate. None of those present thought for a moment of questioning either the genuineness of the will or the validity of the testaments, save only a poor relation, a nephew, whose name was down for $500. He was indignant with the old lady and loudly declared that he would not put up with it. The next day he employed a briefless lawyer, one that had wit and brass enough and who had his way to make in the world, and was determined to make it.