THE RANDALL FAMILY 209
It was with amazement that others as well as myself learned of the great fortune he had in fact acquired. I fancy he himself would have been quite as much amazed as we. After his first stroke of paralysis in May, 1885, he was disabled from attending to his business interests any further than to deposit his dividends in the bank ; and, as Belinda told me, they simply accumulated there in seven years to the amount of a quarter-million. If he had only been able then to make a will, she said it would have spared her a very heavy and distressing responsibility, for she had more than enough of her own and needed nothing of his. Justice to the memory of this uncanonized saint requires some mention here of the way in which her hum- ble yet heroic conscientiousness enabled her, in spite of physical infirmity and constitutional self-distrust and poignant sorrow for the loss of her brother, to discharge what to her was the last great duty of her life — a life in which the monitions of blended duty and love had been "a still, small voice," ever heard and ever heeded.
Knowing always that her brother intended to make no will, but to leave to her the final disposition of his estate, Miss Randall had for many years treasured up in her memory every slightest indication of his wishes, whether dropped in casual remarks from time to time or jotted carelessly or even enigmatically on scraps of paper. I remember her telling me she had found what she took to be a memorandum of some wish or intention of his, a bit of torn paper with ";^i,ooo" pencilled on it in one place, and in quite another place two or three names without further entry : to each of the persons named she sent a cheque of that amount ! Was there ever a fidelity more scrupulous ? When after a month or two of silent and anxious deliberation she had selected Mr. Balch as her
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