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His secretary had cabled to London for instructions.

Forsyth and Co., Solicitors, had referred to the Will and replied that their client was to be buried forthwith, adding that, by the terms of that remarkable document, if his doctor and secretary desired to receive the year’s salary apiece which it offered them, they must be prepared to produce credible testimony that they had followed the coffin attired as convicts and playing vigorously upon harps.

The heat prevailing at San Francisco had not only precluded any discussion of the provision, but had made the asportation of the harps a perfectly hellish business, and only the hilarious encouragement of an enormous crowd had enabled the two contingent legatees to stagger into possession.

There, then, you have the late James Tantamount—bluff, greedy, generous, but blessed or cursed with an incorrigible love of what are called ‘practical’ jokes. It was not his fault. He had been bred upon them. To the day of his death he could recall with tearful relish the memory of his father, amid roars of laughter, pursuing the vicar round the dining-room, while the doctor blew frantically upon a hunting horn and other guests arranged recumbent chairs as timber to be leaped....