The Residuary Legatee

Synopsis

On the morning of August 14th, in this last summer, Mr. Austin May alighted at the little Cypress Street station of the Boston & Albany Railroad, and, accompanied only by a swarthy and adroit valet, and a very handsome St. Bernard dog, got into the somewhat antiquated family “carryall” which awaited him, and drove away. May was a stranger to the man in charge of the station, as well as to the wide-awake trio of boys who made it a sort of club, their exchange of gossip, and pleasure resort; and thus his arrival was unnoticed and unrecorded, though his last absence had extended over a period of several years.

It was a most oppressive day; and what few human beings were dressed and stirring made haste to get beneath the dense foliage, or to plunge into the numerous private-paths and shortcuts, with which the suburb of Brookline is provided; leaving the roads and their dust undisturbed, except by the sedate progress of the old carryall, which left behind it, suspended in the air, an amazing quantity of the same considering its speed, and quite obscured the morning sun with its golden cloud. Austin May might have been an entering circus procession, and no one would have found it out. Even the boys at the station were sluggish, and indisposed to “catch on” behind every train, much less to give their particular attention to one undistinguished stranger, with or without a dog.

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