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There only remained to tidy up the loose ends of what was, after all, a fairly simple will. I asked him what should happen if both he and his sister were to die before the boy Donald was twenty-one, and I suggested that the trust should terminate and the boy should inherit the estate absolutely when he reached his majority. He agreed to this, and I made another note upon my pad.

"Supposing then," I said, "that Donald should die before his mother, or if Donald and his mother should die in some way before you. The estate would then pass to the girl, Jean. Again, I take it that the trust would terminate when she reached her majority?"

"Ye mean," he asked, "when she became twenty-one?"

I nodded. "Yes. That is what we decided in the case of her brother."

He shook his head. "I think that would be most imprudent, Mr. Strachan, if I may say so. No lassie would be fit to administer her own estate when she was twenty-one. A lassie of that age is at the mercy of her sex, Mr. Strachan, at the mercy of her sex. I would want the trust to continue for much longer than that. Till she was forty, at the very least."