A Baltimore millionaire dies and the fortune goes to the wrong claimant, while a murder in the same week fixes suspicion on an innocent man. William Taylor Adams wrote over a hundred books as "Oliver Optic" and ran two boys' magazines. The plot is a machine for demonstrating that money changes what people are willing to swear to. Fifty-seven plates by painters including Winslow Homer and William Merritt Chase turn the novel's questions of reading, money, and judgment into a gallery of American scenes.
