There was no doubt about its being the genuine article, and the lawyer waited a moment before opening it. There was perfect silence in the room, except for the clock on the mantle, which ticked so loudly and made Hester so nervous that she almost screamed aloud. The candles sputtered a little, and ran up long, black wicks, and the fire on the hearth cast weird shadows on the wall, and the silence was growing oppressive, when Frank, who could endure no longer, pulled his mother’s skirts, and exclaimed, “Mother, mother, what is he going to do, and why don’t he do it? I want the darned thing over so I can go out.” That broke the spell, and Lawyer Schofield began to read Squire Irving’s last will and testament. It was dated five years before, at a time when the Squire lay on his sick bed, from which he never expected to rise, and not long after his purchase of the house on Lexington Avenue for Mrs. Walter Scott. There was mention made of his deceased son having received his entire portion, but the sum of four hundred dollars was annually to be paid for Frank’s education until he was of age, when he was to receive from the estate five thousand dollars to “set himself up in business, provided that business had nothing to do with _horses_.” The old man’s aversion to the rock on which his son had split was manifest even in his will, but no one paid any heed to it then. They were listening too eagerly to the reading of the document, which, after remembering Frank, and leaving a legacy to the church in Belvidere, and another to an orphan asylum in New York, and another to his servants, with the exception of Aleck and Hester, gave the whole of the Irving possessions, both real and personal, to the boy Roger, who was as far as possible from realizing that he was the richest heir for miles and miles around. He was feeling sorry that Frank had not fared better, and wondering why Aleck and Hester had not been remembered. _They_ were witnesses of the will, and there was no mistaking Hester’s straight up and down letters, or Aleck’s back-hand.