“I wonder how much he’s got and to whom he’ll leave it?” he asked himself, but now they were within sight of the little house and the old man leaned so heavily upon him, that all his attention was centered on getting him safely to the end of their journey.

By the time this was accomplished Mr. Tyler was so completely exhausted that he dropped down on the first chair they reached.

“After you are rested a bit,” said Roy, “I’ll help you to get to bed.”

“No, no,” protested the old man; “so many people die in their beds.  Go and tell Ann to get a little more for dinner to-night.  You and Sydney must stay and eat it with me.  It will take quite a time to have my will drawn up.  You’ll find her in the kitchen.”

The woman was not much surprised when Roy told her of the condition in which her master had come home.

“It’s what I’ve been expecting every day,” she said.  “He doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.  I’m amazed to think he should ask you to stop to dinner.  It’s little enough you’ll get, Master Roy, but I’ll do my best.”

The house was a bare looking place, furnished only with the merest necessities.  No pictures were on the walls, no books on the tables; Roy wondered what the old man did to pass the time here by himself.  There was not even a sofa for him to lie upon.  He asked about this when he returned to the front room.

“Then you’d better come in and lie on the outside of your bed if you won’t get in it,” he suggested.

To this the older man acceded and allowed Roy to assist him to the adjoining apartment where he slept.

“No,” he murmured, “I haven’t wasted much on myself, you see.  That will leave still more for those who come after me.  What would you do with $500,000 if you had it, Roy Pell?”

The question came so suddenly and in such contrasted tones to the mumble in which the miser had heretofore been speaking that for the moment Roy was too startled to make reply.

“No, I’m not raving, Roy Pell,” went on the old man.  “There’s a possibility—­” he checked himself quickly—­ “what would you do with all that money if you had it?”

“I’d give it to my mother,” answered Roy.

“Good boy, of course.  I didn’t think of that.  You’re a minor, and you’re not selfish.  You’d rather she would have it, eh, than that it should be held by her in trust for you?  But if you got it, you’d promise to see that it was spent, and not hoarded as I have hoarded mine?  You’d promise that wouldn’t you?”

Roy by this time began to think that the partial sunstroke had completely unhinged Mr. Tyler’s brain, already a little out of plumb.

“Oh, yes,” he laughed.  “There’s no danger of our hoarding money.  There are too many things to spend it on for that.”

“Then you’re squeezed a little down at your place, eh?”

“Oh, we can get along,” returned Roy hastily; “but we can’t do much branching out.  My mother has only the income from father’s insurance, and then there’s the place which we own, with the taxes to pay.”