The money was placed in trust for him, so as to net him an income of five thousand dollars a year for life.

Beard found it comparatively easy to induce the man to fall in with the scheme.

In the first place, Timson was that unhappiest of all living creatures, the middle-aged failure.

So far as he could see, the future loomed dark and forbidding, his old age was to be attended by the most bitter poverty.
Not being a drinking man and being cursed with an active imagination, his plight was doubly hard.

Under the circumstances, it could make little difference to him whether he spent his remaining years in jail or the poor-house.
"He seized the opportunity which Beard offered.