it went on behind a very fat man who sat next to me, and he leaned back all the time and hid it.  Jem sat on a little footstool, and fell asleep with his head on my knee, and did not wake till I nudged him, when our names were read out in the will.  Even then he only half awoke, and the fat man drove his elbow into me and hurt me dreadfully for whispering in Jem’s ear that the old miser had left us ten pounds apiece, for having saved the life of his cat.

I do not think any of the strangers (they were distant connections of the old man; he had no near relations) had liked our being there; and the lawyer, who was very kind, had had to tell them several times over that we really had been invited to the funeral.  After our legacies were known about they were so cross that we managed to scramble through the window, and wandered round the garden.  As we sat under the trees we could hear high words within, and by and by all the men came out and talked in angry groups about the will.  For when all was said and done, it appeared that the old miser had not left a penny to any one of the funeral party but Jem and me, and that he had left Walnut-tree Farm to a certain Mrs. Wood, of whom nobody knew anything.

“The wording is so peculiar,” the fat man said to the pale-faced man and a third who had come out with them; “’left to her as a sign of sympathy, if not an act of reparation.’  He must have known whether he owed her any reparation or not, if he were in his senses.”

“Exactly.  If he were in his senses,” said the third man.

“Where’s the money?—­that’s what I say,” said the pale-faced man.

“Exactly, sir.  That’s what I say, too,” said the fat man.

“There are only two fields, besides the house,” said the third.  “He must have had money, and the lawyer knows of no investments of any kind, he says.”

“Perhaps he has left it to his cat,” he added, looking very nastily at Jem and me.

“It’s oddly put, too,” murmured the pale-faced relation.  “The two fields, the house and furniture, and everything of every sort therein contained.”  And the lawyer coming up at that moment, he went slowly back into the house, looking about him as he went, as if he had lost something.

As the lawyer approached, the fat man got very red in the face.

“He was as mad as a hatter, sir,” he said, “and we shall dispute the will.”

“I think you will be wrong,” said the lawyer, blandly.  “He was eccentric, my dear sir, very eccentric; but eccentricity is not insanity, and you will find that the will will stand.”

Jem and I were sitting on an old garden-seat, but the men had talked without paying any attention to us.  At this moment Jem, who had left me a minute or two before, came running back and said:  “Jack!  Do come and look in at the parlour window.  That man with the white face is peeping everywhere, and under all the newspapers, and he’s made himself so dusty!  It’s such fun!”