was dissolved, and the Stanhopes and Lanings were told that they could do as they pleased with the fortune.
"That's the best news yet!" Dick had said, on hearing it. "I guess that will put a spoke in Tad Sobber's wheel."
"It will take one out, you mean," returned Tom, with a sly grin. "Wonder what Tad will do next?"
"He can't do anything," had come from Sam. "He is knocked out clean and clear. I always said he had no right to the fortune. That claim of Sid Merrick's was a fake pure and simple."
"I believe you," Dick answered. "Just the same, I feel, somehow, that Tad won't give up even yet."
"But what can he do?" his two brothers had asked.
"I don't know—but he'll try to do something; see if he doesn't."
A few days later had come in some particulars of the case. After the injunction had been dissolved Tad Sobber and his lawyer had gotten into a big row and Sobber had ended by blackening the legal gentleman's left eye. Then Sobber had mysteriously disappeared, but the next day he had sent a rambling letter to Mrs. Stanhope, stating that, even if thrown out of court, he consid-
