He squeezed mine, too, and said very earnestly: "I served your uncle's interests to the very best of my ability for nearly fifty years.

He had full confidence in me, and I was proud of his trust.

I can honestly say, Rupert--you won't mind me using that familiarity, will you ?--that, though the interests which I guarded were so vast that without abusing my trust I could often have used my knowledge to my personal advantage, I never once, in little matters or big, abused that trust--no, not even rubbed the bloom off it.

And now that he has remembered me in his Will so generously that I need work no more, it will be a very genuine pleasure and pride to me to carry out as well as I can the wishes that I partly knew, and now realize more fully towards you, his nephew." In the long chat which we had, and which lasted till midnight, he told me many very interesting things about Uncle Roger.

When, in the course of conversation, he mentioned that the fortune Uncle Roger left must be well over a hundred millions, I was so surprised that I said out loud--I did not mean to ask a question: "How on earth could a man beginning with nothing realize such a gigantic fortune ?" "By all honest ways," he answered, "and his clever human insight.