Ready money Mortiboy : a matter-of-fact story

Chapter The First

MARKET BASING, in Holmshire, there are five or six good houses that were built, some of them eighty, some of them a hundred years ago—in a word, before the town was what it is. They stood there when the linendrapers, grocers, and silversmiths lived over their shops in the main streets, and not in pretentious villas of unenduring stucco scattered along the Hunslope road, as they

VOL. L I do now. For in those honest days, strange to say, a shopkeeper kept his shop, and wasn’t a bit ashamed of it. And these old houses are tenanted now by persons of the same class as those who occupied them when their bricks were new and red. The one by the church is Lawyer Battiscombe’s. It was his grandfather's before him. That house a hundred yards nearer the middle of the town is Mr. Francis Melliship’s; and a mile in Oxford Street and twenty perches in Market Basing mean about the same thing—for in these small towns, a _ house five steps from your door is in an out-of-theway place it requires an effort to reach. Read the legend in dingy, gilt relief letters over the door— they were much stared at when first put up, being a novelty from London—MELLISHIP, MorTIBoy, & Co. Melliship’s Bank, for there is no Mortiboy in it now. Mortiboy’s Bank is at the other end of the street, by the post-office. In many ways, the two banks are wide as the poles apart. At the other end of the town, in Derngate, is another of these old houses. Here lives Mr. Richard Matthew Mortiboy, by the courtesy of Market Basing—when addressing him in writing—styled esquire, but commonly spoken of as Ready-money Mortiboy. The reason why, I will tell you presently.

The blinds of two of these houses, from garret to kitchen, are drawn down, and the shutters farthest from the door pushed to.

But at the house in Derngate, the shutters next the door on either side are closed, and two mutes, with vulgar faces and silk covered broomsticks, stand on the steps.

Susan Mortiboy is dead, and is about to be buried in St. Giles’s Church ; and the mutes stand at her brother’s door—one on the right hand, and one on the left, arrayed in funeral trappings, bearing the insignia of their order.

Sentinels of honour, to tell us that the Commander-in-Chief, Death, has himself entered the house, and receives the homage of Respectability, his humble servant in this wise.

Outside, it is cold January frost : inside, in the parlour, are the mourners. They have a good fire, and are as comfortable as decency on such occasions will allow. Ready-money Mortiboy’s parlour is a gaunt, cold room, with long, narrow windows, wire blinds, horsehair chairs, a horsehair sofa, red moreen curtains, and a round table with a red cover reaching to the floor. A decanter of sherry and eight glasses are on it.

The company assembled have not had any of the

A Ready-money Mortiboy.

sherry, but sit looking at it. If one catches another’s eye, the one instantly pretends to be intensely occupied with the ceiling, the pictures, the fire, the street view, anything but the sherry. Till, as by a spell, the one’s eyes dwell again on the decanter, are caught in the act, and revert with guilty speed to the street view, pictures, fire, ceiling, anything but the sherry.

Mr. Richard Matthew Mortiboy, the chief mourner, stands with his back to the fireplace. He sighs occasionally with creditable emphasis. He intends his ejaculations to be taken for expressions of grief: they really tell of weariness, and a heartfelt wish that it was all over.

He is sixty-three years old, tall, bald-headed, and of spare frame. His black clothes—he was married in the coat—fit him so tightly that, until you were very well used to his appearance your mind would wander into useless speculations as to the ways and means by which he can get into his suits ; and once in, can ever get out again.

But those who know old Ready-money well, have discovered that he is one of those human eels who can wriggle out of anything they can wriggle into.

Lydia Heathcote, his niece, sits with the Bible open at the Book of Leviticus, looking at her uncle.

She is his next-of-kin now Susan, his sister, is dead, and old Mortiboy is a millionaire.

Honest John Heathcote, her husband, sits next her. The farmer is the only personage in the company who does not take his eyes off the decanter of wine when he is caught looking at it. He does not think it exactly, but he feels that it is the only pleasant object in the room, and stares straight at it accordingly.

The family lawyer, Benjamin Battiscombe, fills the easy chair.

The family doctor, Mr. Kerby, is expected every minute.

Mr. Hopgood, mayor of Market Basing, and’ linendraper, is present in person, out of respect for the family, in his official capacity of undertaker. His face wears an aspect of melancholy solemnity only one shade less deep than that he puts on fora county magnate, deceased—undertaken by Hopgood, Son, & Pywell.

George Ghrimes, as Mr. Mortiboy’s confidential and managing clerk, and the friend and adviser of Susan Mortiboy, deceased, is present.

And in this goodly company there is one real mourner, Mrs. Heathcote’s daughter Lucy, whose gentle hand smoothed the last pillow of Susan Mortiboy, her aunt.

“Put out to be drunk, I suppose,” grunted John Heathcote, with his brown hand on the decanter, to his wife in an undertone. Then aloud, “ Shall I give you a glass of sherry, Lydia ?”

Mrs. Heathcote objected, but took it.

The ice thus broken, a glass was filled for everybody but the chief mourner.

Upto this time there was no conversation, but its place was to some extent supplied by the tolling of St. Giles’s bass bell.

B-ong !—B-ong !—B-ong !—at intervals of half a minute.

Mr. Mortiboy broke the silence.

“What are we waiting for?” he asked, with the impatience of weariness.

“We are waiting for Mr. Francis Melliship and Mr. Kerby,” said the Mayor.

“ Oh-h-h !” sighed the chief mourner, with a look of resignation.

“Francis Melliship all over—eh, Uncle Richard ?” said Mrs. Heathcote, feeling her way. “ He always is behind at everything. I have often heard my poor mother say that, when you married his sister Emily, he kept you all waiting a quarter of an hour before he came to church to give her away. Ha! ha! ha !’”—dquickly suppressed : it was a funeral.

But her uncle looked angry at this mention of his marriage to Miss Melliship, and Lydia Heathcote saw her mistake before he growled out in reply—

“Mr. Melliship’s cavalier proceedings in private life have not come under my notice for years.”

“ How long is it since he has been in your house ?” asked John Heathcote, bluntly.

“ A dozen years, I suppose,” said Lydia.

“Tl tell you,” said Mr. Mortiboy. “ He hasn’t been here since my poor wife was buried—sixteen years ago last April.”

OmNEs: “Ah!”

Lucy Heathcote: “ Poor dear aunt—I remember her very well, though I was but a little child. She always brought something over to Hunslope for Grace and me whenever she came to see us. I recollect her little boxes of sweets, and I have got two of her dolls now. Poor Aunt Emily !”

Mrs. Heathcote: “Ah, poor thing !”

Mr. Mortiboy : “ She was like all the Melliships since the days of Methuselah—always giving something to somebody that was none the better for being made a fool of, Lu,. my girl.”

In this particular way, Lucy’s granduncle Mortiboy had never made a fool of his niece.

“We are all older since then,” said John Heathcote, who was a slow thinker.

“Mr. Melliship affronted me in a way I shall never forget—though I hope I have forgiven him,” said Mr. Mortiboy. He was one of that numerous class of homuncules that think ill, yet speak well.

“Why not be friends, then? I like to see a family all friendly, for my part.”

“That is a worthy sentiment, sir,” said the lawyer. It was the first opportunity he had had of creeping into the conversation.

“Nobody would ever quarrel with you, John,’ said his wife, half reproachfully.

“And I quarrel with nobody.”

“Tf they let you alone,” said Mr. Mortiboy ; “but I was slighted, John. Good—dear me, here is the hearse!” He pulled out his watch. “Ah! I thought as much—we are due at the church now.”

“Shall we send round for Francis Melliship, uncle ?”

“No, Lydia,” said her uncle, with severe irony.

“We all of us dance attendance on Mr. Francis Melliship : everybody in Market Basing always has done, since I’ve known it.”

“ Don’t be hard ona man behind his back,” began the farmer.

Mrs. Heathcote shot a glance at him from her dark eyes that meant—‘ How dare you oppose Uncle Mortiboy ?’—but her husband did not choose to see it. He went on, regardless of consequences.

“T have always respected Mr. Melliship. I hope I always shall. And I wish he came to Hunslope oftener than he does.”

His wife pinched him viciously. Hers was a difficult part to play. She was very friendly, in her way, with the family at the other bank; but she was Ready-money Mortiboy’s nearest of kin.

“ My brother-in-law,” said Mr. Mortiboy, in tones of satire, “is dressing himself with more than his usual care’”—then, in one gruff blast—‘“and Francis Melliship is the greatest Peacock in Market Basing! I—hate—Peacockery in man or woman!”

Mrs, Heathcote smoothed her crape demurely. She loved it: I don’t mean the crape—Dress.

“ Farmer-like—eh, John ?—for you andme. We are not going to begin Peacocking, I think.”

The Mayor’s chief assistant now entered with a mournful bow, and proceeded to decorate the chief mourner witha long crape scarf. The chief mourner resented this.

Holding up the scarf, he said, looking at the man—

“ What is the meaning of this gewgaw ?”

“A scarf, sir—quite usual—at all respectable funerals,”

“ Always worn, sir,” said the Mayor.

“7 never wore one before,” said Mr. Mortiboy, testily. “I should have stopped the affair at hatbands and gloves, I think. Plain, but respectable. I hate show. Poor Susan, too, never cared for ostentation. Mr. Ghrimes—”’

“TI left the matter to Mr. Hopgood, sir. He knows better than I do what to do.”

“ Always our practice, sir,” said the Mayor.

“Well, well. Come, put it on then. As they’re made, we must have them, I suppose. Poor Susan !”

The old man looked mournfully askant at the great crape rosette at his hip, and at the ends of the scarf dangling about his knees.

He shook his head, and, taking from his pocket a sad-coloured silk handkerchief full of holes, he wiped his eyes, but not of tears. There was only

A Matter-of-fact Story. II one loss Mr. Mortiboy would have shed tears over —the loss of money. At sight of his grief, all the company were affected likewise in different degrees. Lucy Heathcote was by his side in an instant. She kissed the old man. At this he wiped his eyes again.

“T have lost all—all—that—were near to me— now,” he said.

“Not all, Uncle Richard,” put in Mrs. Heathcote, meekly, and hiding her face in turn in her handkerchief.

But the old man never noticed her interruption. He went on—

“There was Emily—gone—taken from me just —as—we knew each—other—well—”

“Oh !—oh !—oh !—oh!” sobbed Lydia Heathcote. She had despised poor Mrs. Mortiboy all her life, said every sharp thing she could think of about her behind her back, and would not have called her back again to Market Basing for worlds.

“And Dick—my son—my son! I loved that boy—if—ever—I loved anything—”

His father had turned him out of the house one night—years ago, neck and crop.

“__Goes and runs away from me—and—I’m left alone—now—Susan’s—”

iZ Ready-money Mortiboy.

He looked up towards the bed-room above. “Not alone, uncle, dear,” said Lucy, in a sweet ‘voice. This young thing loved the old hunks himself, and not his money.

The others hung on his words, for he was the greatest man in the town.

Market Basing, town and people, belonged to him—almost.

“Wife dead and gone from me.” He wiped the unsubstantial tears from his eyes again. “Son dead—and—buried—who knows where? Susan— Susan—gone! I’man old man. We spent three hundred — at least, Susan did—trying to— find Dicky

“He was a great trouble to you, sir,” said the lawyer, who had got Dick Mortiboy out of some nasty scrapes.

“The pocket-money that—boy—had”—here he nearly cried in earnest—“ that his aunt Susan gave him. If it was not speaking ill of the dead,” said Mr. Mortiboy, “I should say—Susan—spoilt him. She always sided with him against his father. Ah! I’ve said hundreds of times, ‘My boy, Lightly come, lightly go. He thought nothing of the money he spent. I did not want him to bea spoilt

Peacock. She gave him a gold watch and chain the day he was ten years old. I never had one till my father died. I wanted him to be like Me. But—it—wasn’t to be. People said, ‘ What you've been all your life getting ‘Il soon be spent after you’re—gone, M-o-rtiboy—’”

Mrs. Heathcote groaned at this picture, and looked hard at her uncle. .

«“«__ After you are—gone — M-o-o-rtiboy.’ I used to hope he’d grow up, and alter his ways, and be fond of business, and—all that. Butno! Dick’s dead—my boy’s dead—and—and—I never recollect being separated from Susan before.” ;

“Poor thing! she was such an invalid,” said Mrs. Heathcote, soothingly.

The old man stared at his niece, but went on without noticing her interruption.

“ Ah-h, I—couldn’t have said it then, I dare say I couldn't, but I could say it now if I only had— my —boy—Dick—again, ‘Let him spend it if he likes” I could say—when people said to me, ‘ Mr. Mortiboy, your money will all be spent’—I could say, ‘ From—all—my--heart.’”

It was quite a physiological curiosity, this heart of his, that he spoke of so feelingly. It was such a very little one.

“__T could say from all my heart, ‘Well, if those that have the spending of it have as much pleasure in spending it as I have had in getting it’” —(here Mrs. Heathcote smoothed her dress, and solemnly shock her head, as if there could be no pleasure to her in spending old Ready-money’s hoards ; at the same time, she listened with all her ears)—“ ‘I’m a satisfied man.’ ”

“You can't take yours out of the world with you, any more than anybody else can, I suppose,” said Mr. Heathcote.

“John!!” whispered his wife, in a key of the strongest remonstrance.

“No, Heathcote—no,” said the old man; “and I don’t know that I want. Money’s a trouble and an anxiety—and that’s all.”

A quick step outside ; a gentle knock at the hall door.

One second after, Mr. Melliship was in the parlour, in the midst of them.

He took his stand close to the table: a fine, handsome man of middle age, whose coat and gloves fitted him perfectly. They bore in their cut the indelible mark of a West-end tailor’s skill.

Now, Mr. Melliship was a gentleman, and moved in the best county circles. The others did not, and were afraid of him accordingly. He bowed to them all, but without looking at anybody. His eyes looked straight before him at the wall.

They bowed in return.

Mrs. Heathcote addressed him.

“We began to fear something had kept you, Mr. Melliship—on this melancholy—”

“Occasion” died away on her voluble tongue.

There was something very ise about the fixed gaze of Mortiboy’s brother-in-law.

They all stared where he stared, and found themselves looking at the picture of Susan Mortiboy, painted when she was a comely young woman.

Mrs. Heathcote—irrepressible—recovered herself at once, and translated in an audible whisper, for the company, the thoughts that were passing in Mr. Melliship’s mind.

“Tt is a long time since he was here. He is thinking of Susan, or of his sister Emily. It is a melancholy occasion—”

“T beg your pardon, Mr. Mortiboy,” he began. Then pressed his thumb-nail hard against his teeth, and looked at the red cloth.

He gulped down some rising in his throat, made an effort to recover his self-possession, and continued—thrusting his hand into his coat-pocket—

“T—I’m rather absent, I fear. To tell you all the truth, I hardly feel well this morning. I found this to-day. It—it—rather shook me. You will know the writing. I wish it were true.”

He handed a yellow scrap of antique letter paper to Mr. Mortiboy.

The old man took it. It was his wife’s writing— a voice from the dead—though that was nothing to him. He opened the note; then, bursting with anger, turned purple in the face, for he read—

“THE LATE Mk. GASH’S RECIPE FOR REMOVING BALD PATCHES ON THE HEAD:—USE CAYENNE PEPPER AND COD-LIVER OIL, WELL RUBBED IN, NIGHT AND MORNING.”

Old Ready-money boiled with rage, and gasped for breath.

The top of his own head was as bald as a billiard ball. Trembling violently, he handed the paper in silence to Mrs. Heathcote. She read it with amazement, and stared in expectation, first at her uncle, then at Mr. Melliship.

“ Cod-liver oil and cayenne pepper! Good God, man! Years ago—your insult—to me! With my dead sister lying up-stairs, have you come here to insult me over her coffin?” roared Mr. Mortiboy, clutching his cravat with his lank fingers.

“T beg your pardon—there must be some mistake here. J am innocent of any intention to insult you.”

He took the paper from Mrs. Heathcote, folded it mechanically, and replaced it in his pocket, and stared again at the portrait.

On the others the late Mr. Gash’s recipe had fallen like a bombshell.

As a matter of course, for a moment there was a slight titter. Old Ready-money was so angry—so bald—and altogether it was so funny, they forgot where they were.

A titter, instantly suppressed.

They looked at Mr. Melliship for an explanation.

And he looked so strange that morning, not one of them dared ask him for it.

So they sat mute.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Heathcote and Lucy, with wellmeant but unsuccessful endeavours, tried to soothe the old man.

“He’s d-r-u-n-k, I firmly believe,’ her uncle hissed in Mrs. Heathcote’s ear; and he cast an angry glance at the man he had for twenty good years treated as a foe.

But there was yet one more outrage on propriety for them to bear.

VOL. i: 2

Francis Melliship advanced—his head up, his chest thrust forward.

Old Ready-money involuntarily shrank from him.

He was a coward, and afraid.

Mr. Melliship took another step in advance.

Hitherto they had looked at his face, for the table cover had hidden his legs. Now they looked at them.

“Good heavens! Mr. Melliship. Sir the chief assistant, who had been about to endue

” cried the banker with a scarf like the others.

“Mr. Melliship !” exclaimed the lawyer and the Mayor in a breath, opening their eyes to their widest.

The old man looked. Lucy looked.

“Merciful goodness!” her mother shrieked ; “why, you've got light—ahem !—trousers on !”

The astonishment and confusion you can imagine. If you doubt it, try the effect yourself on a like occasion.

Another knock ; slightly louder than Mr. Melliship’s had been.

Dr. Kerby entered the room—suave, polite. He began to stammer an apology for being a few minutes late; in fact, he had been—a—attending Lady——”

“Mr. Mortiboy—Mr. Battiscombe—what is the matter ?”

A pause. He looked round, and met Francis Melliship’s eyes full.

And he read their meaning.

“Oh-h-h! we are very old friends, and very good friends,” he said, linking his arm in Mr. Melliship’s ; “and, my dear sir, as one of the most amiable and polite men I ever met—a man who never refused me a request—”

“No; my purse is always at the service of the —poor. You mean—the cheque—for the Hospital I said I would—”

“T must ask you for five minutes of your valuable time ; and, as a great favour, now—at once.”

They walked out arm-in-arm in the direction of Mr. Melliship’s house.

As the two left the room, the doctor had looked behind him very significantly.

Then they forgot everything in the strange scene they had just witnessed. The old man all angry— Lucy sorry—the others curious.

“T say he’s disgracefully tipsy, at one o’clock in the day, and the doctor knew it. But, Mr. Francis

Phe Pe

20 Ready-money Mortrboy.

Melliship, I shall be even with you ’’—then, in a lower tone, “ some day—soon.”

The politic lawyer was inclined to assent. True, he did not number among his clients Francis Melliship.

John Heathcote spoke out his mind.

“J think, Mr. Mortiboy, you do Melliship an injustice. Before to-day I have heard of his drinking more than is good for him ; but I never believed ite Pthinkwhe is 1”

“John!” exclaimed his wife.

“He never meant to insult you or anybody else. He is too much the gentleman to do it.”

The old man was getting purple again.

“John!!’—and Lydia pinched him as hard as she could.

Various suggestions were made as to the cause and meaning of this strange conduct of Mr. Melliship’s,

All the while, the solution lay neatly folded on the floor.

Lucy’s eye caught it. She picked up a crumpled letter in the same handwriting as the recipe for bald spots.

She just glanced at the contents—lest, perchance, she should add fuel to the fire—and handed her

A Matier-of-fact Story. 21 uncle a letter in which his wife, Francis Melliship’s sister, had tried to heal a family dispute between her husband and her brother with true woman’s tact ; and hoped and foretold, and prayed too, that they might live in brotherly love for the future.

The old man read it, and frowned over it.

“This is what Mr. Melliship meant to give you, Uncle Richard, I feel sure. He gave you the other by mistake.”

Old Ready-money shook his head slowly and incredulously.

“Why did he give me the other, then? He is not sober, that’s why.”

Everybody else believed Lucy’s surmise was true. But this did not explain Mr. Melliship’s extraordinary conduct in coming to a funeral without being dressed for one.

The whole thing was a riddle, and they were dying to solve it, but could not.

“Will he come back? Are we to wait?” they whispered.

Now all this had wasted half an hour or more ; and the men standing at the door were frozen.

No stress of weather must shake a mute’s deey So their teeth chattered, and their hands and feet were numbed dead.

A decent servant maid came in, and whispered something in the ear of Mrs. Heathcote. She referred her to her uncle.

But the chief mourner was deaf, and the message had to be repeated aloud. When he heard it, he exclaimed, with much irritation—

“Hester! Brandy! Who for? The mutes? Now, what do mutes want with brandy ?”

“They are starved, sir, with the cold,” said the chief assistant, “and I thought you might be pleased to send them a little drop before we start. Very sorry to trouble you, but the maid said you had the key.”

“Certainly not. They can’t require it at sucha time. They’re paid, I suppose.”

“Their teeth, sic, they ‘quite chatter> and ir Mopes, he’s snivelling with the cold, and can’t help himself, poor man. I beg your pardon, sir; but a day like this, mutes will get chilled ; and when one’s teeth get chattering, it looks like a snivel, hold your silk how you may.”

“Then tell him not to snivel, from me. He was before me the other day—he snivelled then. It’sa way he’s got, I think. God bless my heart—can’t they jump about, and keep ’emselves warm? I do thts

The revolutionary boldness of Mr. Mortiboy’s proposition so utterly staggered the undertaker, that he stood full thirty seconds before he spoke in reply.

“Not well, sir. You see, it isn’t usual, sir— with the profession. But I'll tell them what you say.”

A grunt.

Enter Hester the maid again.

“Dr. Kerby’s compliments, sir, and he’s very sorry, and neither he nor Mr. Meltiship will be able to be present at the funeral. Mr. Melliship’s taken ill.”

The others wondered very much, and went without them.

Mrs. Heathcote and Lucy spent the time that they were away in settling the nature of Mr. Francis Melliship’s complaint.

But they were a long way out in their guesses.

———— yea et LER the coaches had set the mourners bes | down again at Mr. Mortiboy’s house, the funeral party had still two pieces of business to perform.

They had to eat the luncheon provided for them, and to hear the will read.

The question they silently debated was whether Susan Mortiboy —who all her life had spent half her income in works of charity, and the other half on keeping up a house for her brother to live in—had ventured to leave any of her money to anything or anybody but Ready-money Mortiboy by her will. She possessed a sum of twenty-five thousand pounds, left her by her father. This sum her brother at once took out of the Three per Cent. Consols for her, and reinvested it at two per cent.—grudgingly paid—with himself. As her life was for years considered a bad one—physically—her brother paid the interest over to her for two very good reasons. First, because he thought he should not have to pay it very long ; secondly, because she had the absolute power of disposing of the principal by her will.

This led him to regard charitable institutions of all kinds as his natural enemies—though, for decency’s sake, he subscribed five guineas a-year to the County Infirmary, and two to the Albert Dispensary. For he felt sure that, if he did not inherit his sister’s money, the charities would get it among them.

So, twelve ycars and two months before our story opens, he availed himself of a fit of indisposition more severe than usual to help his sister Susan to make her will. Now, he had in his library a _ mischievous octavo volume called “Every Man his own Lawyer,” published for one Grantham, in the Strand, and several other worthies of the trade, in the year of our Lord 1826. Out of this he took a form of a testamentary instrument, in which Richard Roe bequeathed to John Doe certain personal property, under certain conditions, set out with all the old-fashioned piety and verbosity common in the wills and testaments of half a century ago. For this will in the book fitted his sister Susan’s intentions to a T. Mr. Mortiboy had struggled hard to make her bequeath her property to him absolutely, but she would not consent ; so he gave in with a good grace, made her will himself, and saved three or four guineas Lawyer Battiscombe ought to have pocketed. He read it over to her, and she signed it in the presence of Hester Noble, domestic servant, and George Smith, gardener; and Mr. Mortiboy locked it up in his safe till it should be wanted: through having taken effect. And this was it: fairly written out, in old Ready-money’s clerkly autograph—

“In the name of God Amen I Susan Mortiboy of Derngate in the town of Market Basing in the county of Holm spinster being of sound and disposing mind memory and understanding but mindful of my mortality do this second day of December in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and forty-nine make and publish this my last Will and testament in manner and form following that is to say First I desire to be decently and privately

A Matter-of-fact .Story. a7.

buried in the churchyard of the parish in which I shall happen to die without any funeral pomp and with as little expense as may be—”

‘“ Now, that I perfectly agree with,” her brother had said, as he was making a rough draft of the will. “The author? Mr. Gifford. Well, Mr. Gifford, you’re a very sensible man. You're just of my mind in the matter. No useless pomp and expense.”

At this point in the proceedings, however, the old gentleman’s feelings had been grossly outraged, for his sister had put him to the pain of writing the words that gave away four hundred pounds sterling, and made certain little specific bequests of personal effects. Reluctantly, too, he had added—

“ And as to all the rest residue and remainder of my estate whatsoever and wheresoever and of what nature kind and quality soever the same may be and not hereinbefore given and disposed of after payment of my just debts legacies funeral expenses and the expense of proving this my Will I do hereby give and bequeath the same to and unto John Heathcote of Hunslope in the county of Holm gentleman and to and unto George Heathcote of

Launton Grange in the same county gentleman nevertheless in trust for and to the use of—”

And the trust was this.

The trustees were to hold the twenty-five thousand pounds for twelve years, and then pay it, with the interest accruing thereon, to Richard Matthew Mortiboy, testatrix’s brother—if her nephew, Richard Melliship Mortiboy, should not during that time be heard of, or his death be satisfactorily proved. Inthe event of his coming back, he was to have the money absolutely.

The twelve years had gone. Dick had not turned up, and it was two months over the limit put down in the will.