It's as clean an instrument as ever survived a man." It is, by this time, safe for the reader to assume that Mr.Taswell Skaggs had been a rich man and therefore privileged to be eccentric.

It is also time for the writer to turn the full light upon the tragic comedy which entertained but did not amuse a select audience of lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic.

As this tale has to do with the adventures of Taswell Skaggs's heirs and not with the strange old gentleman who sleeps his last sleep literally in the midst of the island of Japat, it is eminently wise to make as little as possible of him.
Mr.Skaggs came of a sound old country family in upper England, but seems to have married a bit above his station.

His wife was serving as governess in the home of a certain earl when Taswell won her heart and dragged her from the exalted position of minding other people's children into the less conspicuous one of caring for her own.

How the uncouth country youth--not even a squire--overcame her natural prejudice against the lower classes is not for me to explain.