“I never knew about it till a little while ago when I got the queerest letter from a Mr. Colin McPherson, enclosing a copy of the stupidest, ridiculousest, absurdest, craziest will that was ever made. Did you ever hear of old Sandy McPherson, of Oakfield, a little town on the New England coast, with nothing in it but rocks and ferns and huckleberries and sumac bushes? I never heard of it or him till I got his brother’s letter. It seems Sandy was my great-step-grandfather, who was married twice. His second wife was a widow, a Mrs. Somebody, who had a daughter when she married him and she—the wife—was my great-grandmother. I never knew I had a great-grandmother, though I suppose I must have had. I certainly did not know that she married Sandy McPherson. But to return to the will. “Sandy McPherson’s first wife was also a widow, like the second. He was great on widows, and his first wife had a son, not his, but somebody else’s. That would make him a stepson just as my grandmother was a stepdaughter. I hope you follow me. I had to read the letter over two or three times before I understood it. Where was I? Oh, I know. I was telling you about the first wife and her son, and along this line comes Mr. McPherson’s great-step-grandson, Reginald Travers.” (“Lord Harry!” and Tom nearly fell off his chair. Then straightening himself, he read on:) “Now what possessed Sandy McPherson to pick out Reginald Travers and little, insignificant me to heir his property and marry each other, I don’t know, but he did!” (“The old idiot!” from Tom, down whose face the sweat was running in streams, as he continued reading:) “Aunt Mary has heard about him and says he had some kind of a love affair before he married. I don’t know what, but he got a twist in his head that he owed something to his two wives, or their relations on account of that love affair, and this is what he did: He gave one hundred thousand dollars to Mr. Travers and me in case we married each other for love. He laid great stress on that. We must love each other. If we do not, that is, if I love him and he does not me and draws back, he is to have only twenty thousand and I eighty thousand. If, on the other hand, he likes me, and I do not like him, he is to get eighty and I twenty. If we are indifferent to each other and want somebody else, each is to have ten thousand, and the rest goes to some missions and his brother, who is to live with us if we marry, and he wishes to. “Did you ever hear anything so insane? Of course I shall hate Reginald Travers. That’s a foregone conclusion. I hate him now, but I want to see him without his knowing who I am. I am great on trying experiments, and this is my last, which promises a lot of fun. I have thought it all out and am quite excited over it.