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"Of Walker, Post & Wright?" Hart asked, naming one of the best known firms of architects in the country.

"Yes. They've been doing something for me in Chicago. If you have n't made any plans, you might start in their office. That'll teach you the ropes over here."

Nothing was said about an allowance or a continuation of those generous and gratefully acknowledged cheques which had made life at Cornell and at Paris so joyous.

And nothing more was ever said about them! Jackson Hart had taken the position that Wright had made for him in his Chicago office, and within a fortnight of the day he landed at New York he was making his daily pilgrimage to the twelfth floor of the Maramanoc Building, where under the bulkheads worked a company of young gentlemen in their shirt-sleeves.

That was two years ago, and by this time he was ready for almost any kind of change.

III.

The morning after the funeral Francis Jackson Hart was working on the elevation of a large hotel that Walker, Post & Wright were to build in Denver. This was in all probability the last piece of work that he should be called upon to do for that firm, and the thought was pleasant to him. He had not spent an altogether happy two years in that office. It was a large firm, with other offices in St. Paul and New York, and work under construction in a dozen different states. Wright was the only member of the firm who ever thought of coming to Chicago; he dropped into the office nearly every month, coming from somewhere north or east and bound for somewhere south or west, with only a few days to spare. He was a tall, thin man, with harassed, nearsighted eyes, a gentleman, and well trained in his profession according to the standards of a generation ago. But he

had fallen upon a commercial age, and had not been large enough to sway it. He made decent compromises between his taste and that of his clients, and prided himself on the honesty of construction in his buildings.

Wright had hurt Hart's susceptibilities almost at the start, when he remarked about a sketch that the young architect had made for a new telephone exchange:

"All you want, my boy, is the figure of a good fat woman flopping around above the third story to make the Prix de Rome."

For the next few months Hart had been kept busy drawing spandrels. From this he was promoted to designing stables for rich clients. He resented the implied criticism of his judgment, and he put Wright down as a mere Philistine, who had got his training in an American office.

Now, he said to himself, as he took down his street coat and adjusted his cuffs before going over to his cousin's office to hear the will, he should leave Wright's "department store," and show "the old man" what he thought of the kind of building the firm was putting up for rich and common people. He, at least, would not be obliged to be mercenary. His two years' experience in Chicago had taught him something about the fierceness of the struggle to exist in one of the professions, especially in a profession where there is an element of fine art. And his appetite to succeed, to be some one in the hurly-burly of Chicago, had grown very fast. For he had found himself less of a person in his native city than he had thought it possible over in Paris, even with the help of his rich uncle, with whom he had continued to live.

So, as the elevator of the Dearborn Building bore him upwards that afternoon, his heart beat exultantly: he was to hear in a few moments what advantage he had been given over all the toiling, sweating fraternity here in the ele

vator, out there on the street! By the right of fortunate birth he was to be spared the common lot of man, to be placed high up on the long, long ladder of human fate.

When he entered Everett Wheeler's private office, Hollister was talking with Judge Phillips. The latter nodded pleasantly to the young man, and gave him

The gray-bearded mar ceased talking for a moment and looked at the two younger men. Everett was paring his nails, very neatly, with the air of attention he wore when he was engaged in taking a deposition. The architect looked blankly mystified.

"He wanted to help men," Hollister resumed less demonstratively. "Especially workingmen, the kind he had known

his hand. "How do you do, sir?" he asked, all his life. He never forgot that he with great emphasis.

The judge, who had not sat in a court for more than a generation, was a vigorous, elderly man, with a sweeping gray mustache. He was an old resident of Chicago, and had made much money, most of it in Powers Jackson's enterprises.

Hollister nodded briskly to the architect, and motioned him to a seat. Presently Everett came in from the safe where he had gone to get some papers, and Hollister, who seemed to be spokesman for the executors, clearing his throat, began:

worked at the forge the first five years he lived in Chicago. And no matter what the labor unions say, or the cheap newspaper writers, there was n't a man in this city who cared for the best interests of laboring men more than Powers Jackson."

Across the judge's handsome face flitted the glimmer of a smile, as if other memories, slightly contradictory, would intrude themselves on this eulogy. Everett, having finished cutting his nails, was examining his shoes. He might be thinking of the price of steel billets in Liverpool, or he might be thinking that Holno one could tell. "He took advice; he consulted many men, among them the president of a great Eastern university. And here in this document "- Hollister took up the will" he embodied the results, his purposes."

"Well, gentlemen, we all know what lister was an ass, we are here for, I presume."

The young architect never remembered clearly how it all came about. At first he wondered why old Hollister should open the proceedings with such elaborate eulogies of the dead man. Hollister kept saying that few men had understood the real man in Powers Jackson, the warm, man's heart that beat beneath the rude and silent manner.

"I want to say," Hollister exclaimed in a burst of unwonted emotion, "that it was more than mutual interest which allied the judge and me to Mr. Jackson. It was admiration! Admiration for the man!"

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In the architect's confused memory of the fateful scene there was at this point a red spot of consciousness. The man of affairs, looking straight at him, seemingly, announced:

"Powers Jackson left the bulk of his large fortune in trust with the purpose of founding a great school for the children of workingmen!"

There ensued a brief pause. Hart did

The judge punctuated this opinion not comprehend at once the full signifiwith a grave nod.

"Especially these latter years, when your uncle was searching for a way in which he might most benefit the world with the fortune that he had earned by his ability and hard work."

cance of what had been said. But the others made no remark, and so Hollister asked the lawyer to read the will, clause by clause.

It was a very brief document. There was an item, Jackson recalled afterward,

leaving the old family farm at Vernon Falls in Vermont to 66 my dear young friend, Helen Powers Spellman, because she will love it for my sake as well as for itself." And to this bequest was added a few thousand dollars as a maintenance fund.

He might have treated her more generously, it occurred to the architect vaguely, valuing in his own mind the old place as naught.

"And to my nephews, Everett Wheeler and Francis Jackson Hart, ten thousand dollars each in the following securities." This he understood immediately. So, that was his figure! He scarcely noted the next clause, which gave to his mother the Ohio Street house and a liberal income for her life. He did not fully recover himself until Hollister remarked with a little upward inflection of satisfaction: "Now we come to the core of the apple! "

Slowly, deliberately, Everett read

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Said fund and its accumulations to be devoted to the founding and maintenance of a school or institution for the purpose of providing an education, industrial and technical, for the children of workingmen, of the city of Chicago."

"That," exclaimed Hollister triumphantly, "is to be Powers Jackson's gift to mankind!"

There were a few more sentences to the will, elaborating slightly the donor's design and providing for a partition of the estate into building and endowment funds. Yet, as a whole, the document was singularly simple, almost bare in its disposition of a very large amount of money. It reposed a great trust in the

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"That's a pretty bad piece of work, that instrument," Everett observed, narrowing his eyes to a thin slit. didn't get me to draw it up. I can't see how the old man could trust his stuff to such a loosely worded document." "Fortunately," Hollister hastened to say, "in this case we may hope that will make no difference."

There was an awkward pause, and then the lawyer replied drawlingly :"No, I don't suppose there'll be any trouble. I don't see why there should be."

Jackson felt dimly that here was his chance to protest, to object to Everett's calm acceptance of the will. But a certain shame, or diffidence, restrained him at the moment from showing these men that he felt injured by his uncle's will. He said nothing, and Hollister began to talk of the projected school. It was to be something new, not exactly like any other attempt in education in our country, and it would take time to perfect the details of the plan. There was no need for haste.

"We must build for generations when we do start," Hollister said. "And the other trustees agree with me that this is not the most opportune time for converting the estate into ready money."

"It will pretty nearly double the next five years," the judge observed authoritatively.

"At the present, as closely as we can estimate it, there is available for the purposes of the trust a little over three millions of dollars."

Over three millions! Jackson Hart

started in his chair. He had had no idea that his uncle was worth anything like that amount. And these shrewd men thought it would probably double during the next five years! Well, so far as he was concerned it might be three cents. Possibly Everett would get a few dollars out of it as trustee. He had already shared in some of the old man's plums, Hart reflected bitterly. While the trustees were discussing some detail among themselves, the young architect made an excuse of a business engagement and slipped away. Just as he reached the door, Everett called out:

"We'll send the will over for probate to-morrow. If there's no hitch, the legacies will be paid at once. I'll be over to see your mother very soon and arrange for the payment of her annuity."

Jackson nodded. He did not like to try his voice. He knew that it was very dry. Somehow he found himself in the elevator herded in a cage of office boys and clerks, sweating and dirty from a long day's work. At the street level he bought a newspaper, and the first thing that caught his eye in its damp folds were the headlines:

JACKSON'S MILLIONS GO TO EDUCATION

THE STEEL MAGNATE'S MONEY WILL FOUND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL

Hart crumpled up the sheet and threw it into the gutter. The first intelligible feeling that he had over his situation was a sort of shame that his uncle should have held him so cheap. For so he interpreted the gift of ten thousand dollars! And he began to try in his mind the case between himself and his uncle. He had always been led to believe that he was the most favored of all the old man's dependents. Surely he had been treated like a son, and he was not conscious that he had ever been ungrateful or unworthy. Now, without having committed any public folly, he was made a

thing of pity and contempt before his friends!

He resented the old man's kindness, now that he knew where it led. Very swiftly he began to realize what it would mean to be without fortune. He had intended to move to New York, where some of his friends had started prosperously, and had invited him to join them. And there was Helen, whom he had come to love! Marriage was now out of the question. For Helen no more than he had been favored by his uncle. Even Helen, whom he had pretended to love, had been left with only a stony farm. . . .

Thus he ploughed his way down the murky street in the direction of the North Side Bridge. The gloom of a foggy spring evening was added to the smoke and grime of the careless city. The architect felt dirty and uncomfortable, and he knew now that he was condemned to struggle on in this unlovely metropolis, where even the baked meats of life were flung at one ungarnished.

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"He might have done more for you, too, seeing what a sight of money he left." "Yes, he might have done it, but you see he did n't choose to. And I guess the best thing we can do is to say as little as possible about the That money. is, unless we decide to fight the will." He threw this out tentatively. It had not occurred to him to contest the will until he began to wash for supper. Then he had thought suddenly :"Why should I stand it?"

But Mrs. Hart, who had never opposed her brother in all her life, exclaimed: "You would n't do that, Jackson! I am sure Powers would n't like it."

"Perhaps not,” the young man replied ironically. "It is n't his money, now, though."

It occurred to him soon, however, that by this act he would endanger his mother's comfortable inheritance, besides estranging his cousin Everett and all the old man's friends. To contest the will would be a risk. It was a matter upon which he should have to take advice at once. When he spoke again at the end of their supper, he said judicially :—

"I am glad you are comfortably looked out for, though I hope I should always be able to give you a home anyway. And we must remember that uncle gave me my education and my three years in Paris, and I suppose that after that he thought ten thousand dollars was all that I was worth, or could take care of!" He said this, standing in front of the heavy black-walnut bookcases, which he

abhorred, while he lit a cigarette, one of those vices despised by the old man. He felt that he was taking his injury in a manly way, although he still reserved to himself the right to seek relief from the courts. And in the deeper reaches of his being there was a bitter sense of resentment, a desire to make the world pay him in some manner for his disappointment. If he had to, he would show people that he could make his own way; that he was more than the weakling his uncle had contemptuously overlooked in the disposal of his property. He should rise in his profession, make money, and show the world how he could swim without Powers Jackson's millions.

“What kind of a school are they going to start with all that money?" Mrs. Hart asked, as she seated herself for the evening.

"Oh, something technical. For sons of mechanics, a kind of mechanics' institute."

He thought of some of the old man's caustic remarks about charities.

"Wanted to make good before he quit, I suppose," he mused.

"Will you stay on with that firm?" Mrs. Hart asked, taking up Lanciani's Pagan and Christian Rome.

"I suppose I'll have to," her son answered after a time. . .

Thus these two accepted the dead man's will. Powers Jackson had come to his decision after long deliberation, judging that toward all who might have claims of kind upon any him he had acted justly and generously. He had studied these people about him for a long time. With Everett he had acquitted himself years before, when he had put it in the young man's way to make money in his profession, to kill his prey for himself. Jackson, he deemed, would get most out of the fight of life by making the struggle, as he had made it himself, unaided. As for Helen, he had given the girl what was most intimately his, and what would do her the least harm by attracting to her

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