document attached. Wyckholme named Sir John Allencrombie as one executor and Skaggs selected Alfred Bowen, of Boston, as the other.

As Wyckholme was the first to die, Skaggs became sole owner of the island and its treasures, and it was he who made the final will in accordance with the original plans.

The island of Japat with its jewels and its ancient château—of modern construction—represented several million pounds sterling. Its owners had accumulated a vast fortune, but, living in seclusion as they did, were hard put for means to spend any considerable part of it. Wyckholme's dream of erecting an exact replica of a famous old château found response in the equally whimsical Skaggs, who constantly bemoaned the fact that it was impossible to spend money. For five years after its completion the two old men, with an army of Arabian retainers and Nubian slaves, lived like Oriental potentates in the huge structure on the highlands overlooking the sea.

Skaggs seldom went from one part of his home to another without a guide. It was so vast and so labyrinthine that he feared he might become lost forever. The dungeon below the château, and the moat with its bridges, were the especial delight of these lonely, romantic old chaps. One of the builders of this rare pile was now sleeping peacefully in the sarcophagus beneath the chapel; the other was lying dead and undiscovered in the very heart of his possessions. Their executors were sourly wondering whether the two venerable testators were not even then grinning from those far-away sepulchres in contemplation of the first feud their unprimitive castle was to know.

The magnificent plans of the partners would have been a glorious tribute to romance had it not been for one fatal obstacle. The trouble was that neither young Miss Ruthven nor young Mr. Browne knew that their grandfathers lived, much less that they owned an island in the South Seas. Therefore it is quite natural that they could not have known they were expected to marry each other. In complete but blissful ignorance that the other existed, the young legatees fell in love with persons unmentioned in the will and performed the highly commendable but exceedingly complicating act of matrimony. This emergency, it is humane to suspect, had not revealed itself to either of the grandfathers.

Miss Ruthven, from motives peculiar to the head and not to the heart, set about to earn a title for herself. Three months before the death of Mr. Skaggs she was married to Lord Deppingham, who possessed a title and a country place that 

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