There was another element in the Carson home that drew her strongly,
although she was shy about even thinking of it, and that was the frank,
outspoken Christianity. "Ma" tempered all her talk with it, adjusted all
her life to God and what He would think about her actions, spoke
constantly of what was right and wrong. Betty had never lived in an
atmosphere where right and wrong mattered. Something sweet and pure like
an instinct in her own soul had held her always from many of the ways
of those about her, perhaps the spirit of her sweet mother allowed to be
one of those who "bear them up, lest at any time they dash their feet
against a stone." Or it might have been some memory of the teachings of
her father, whom she adored, and who in his last days often talked with
her alone about how he and her own mother would want her to live. But
now, safe and quiet in this shelter of a real home, poor though it was,
the God-instinct stirred within her, caused her to wonder what He was,
why she was alive, and if He cared? One could not live with Mrs. Carson
without thinking something about her God, for He was an ever-present
help in all her times of need, and she never hesitated to give God the
glory for all she had achieved, and for all the blessings she had
received.

The very first Sabbath in the little white church stirred still deeper
her awakening interest in spiritual things. The minister's wife was a
sweet-faced woman who called her "my dear" and invited her to come and
see her, and when she began to teach the lesson Betty found to her
amazement that it was interesting. She spoke of God in much the same
familiar way that "Ma" had done, only with a gentler refinement, and
made the girls very sure that whatever anybody else believed, Mrs.
Thornley was a very intimate friend of Jesus Christ. Betty loved her at
once, but so shy was she that the minister's wife never dreamed it, and
remarked to her husband Sunday night after church, when they were having
their little, quiet Sabbath talk together, that she was afraid she was
going to have a hard time winning that little new girl that had come to
live with Mrs. Carson.

"Somehow I can't get away from the thought that she comes from
aristocracy somewhere," she added. "It's the way she turns her head, or
lifts her eyes or the quiet assurance with which she answers. And she
smiles, Charles, never grins like the rest. She is delicious, but
somehow I find myself wondering if I have remembered to black my shoes
and whether my hat is on straight, when she looks at me."

"Well, maybe she's the daughter of some black sheep who has gone down a
peg, and our Father has sent her here for you to help her back again,"
said her husband with an adorable look at his helper. "If anyone can do
it you can."

"I'm not so sure," she said, shaking her head. "She maybe doesn't need
me. She has Mrs. Carson, remember, and she is a host in herself. If
anybody can lead her to Christ she can, plain as she is."

"Undoubtedly you were meant to help, too, dear, or she would not have
been sent to you."

His wife smiled brilliantly a look of thorough understanding: "Oh, I
know. I'm not going to shirk any but I wish I knew more about her. She
is so sad and quiet, I can't seem to get at her."

Even at that moment Betty lay in her little cot bed under the roof
thinking about the minister's wife and what she had said about Christ
being always near, ready to show what to do, if one had the listening
heart and the ready spirit. Would Christ tell her what to do, she
wondered, now right here, if she were to ask him? Would He show her
whether to stay in this place or seek further to hide herself from the
world? Would He show her how to earn her living and make her life right
and sweet as it ought to be.

Then she closed her eyes and whispered softly under the sheltering
bedclothes, "O Christ, if you are here, please show me somehow and teach
me to understand."

CHAPTER IX

WHEN Betty had been in Tinsdale about a month it was discovered that she
could play the piano. It happened on a rainy Sunday in Sunday school,
and the regular pianist was late. The superintendent looked about
helplessly and asked if there was anybody present who could play,
although he knew the musical ability of everybody in the village. The
minister's wife had already pleaded a cut finger which was well wrapped
up in a bandage, and he was about to ask some one to start the tune
without the piano when Mrs. Thornton leaned over with a sudden
inspiration to Betty and asked:

"My dear, you couldn't play for us, could you?"

Betty smiled assent, and without any ado went to the instrument, not
realizing until after she had done so that it would have been better
policy for her to have remained as much in the background as possible,
and not to have shown any accomplishments lest people should suspect her
position. However, she was too new at acting a part to always think of
these little things, and she played the hymns so well that they gathered
about her after the hour was over and openly rejoiced that there was
another pianist in town. The leader of Christian Endeavor asked her to
play in their meeting sometimes, and Betty found herself quite popular.
The tallest girl in their class, who had not noticed her before, smiled
at her and patronized her after she came back from playing the first
hymn, and asked her where she learned to play so well.

"Oh, I used to take lessons before my father died," she said, realizing
that she must be careful.

Emily and Bob came home in high feather and told their mother, who had
not been able to get out that morning, and she beamed on Betty with as
warm a smile as if she had been her own daughter:

"Now, ain't that great!" she said, and her voice sounded boyish just
like Jane's. "Why, we'll have to get a pianna. I heard you could get 'em
cheap in the cities sometimes--old-fashioned ones, you know. I heard
they have so many old-fashioned ones that they have to burn 'em to get
rid of 'em, and they even give 'em away sometimes. I wonder, could we
find out and get hold of one?"

"I guess 'twould cost too much to get it here," said Bob practically.
"My! I wisht we had one. Say, Lizzie, 'f we had a pianna would you show
me how to read notes?"

"Of course," said Betty.

"Well, we'll get one somehow! We always do when we need anything
awfully. Look at the bathtub! Good-night! I'm goin' to earn one myself!"
declared Bob.

"Mrs. Crosby's gotta get a new one. P'raps she'll sell us her old one
cheap."

That was the way the music idea started, and nothing else was talked of
at the table for days but how to get a piano. Then one day Emily came
rushing home from school all out of breath, her eyes as bright as stars,
and her cheeks like roses. "Mrs. Barlow came to our school to-day and
talked to the teacher, and I heard her say she was going away for the
winter. She's going to store her goods in the Service Company barn, but
she wants to get somebody to take care of her piano. I stepped right up
and told her my mother was looking for a piano, and we'd be real careful
of it, and she's just delighted; and--it's coming to-morrow morning at
nine o'clock! The man's going to bring it!"

She gasped it out so incoherently that they had to make her tell it over
twice to get any sense out of it; but when Bob finally understood he
caught his little sister in his arms and hugged her with a big smacking
kiss:

"You sure are a little peach, Em'ly!" he shouted. "You're a pippin of
the pippins! I didn't know you had that much nerve, you kid, you! I sure
am proud of you! My! Think of havin' a pianna! Say, Betty, I can play
the base of chopsticks now!"

The next evening when Betty got home from the Hathaways there was the
piano standing in the big space opposite the windows in the dining-room.
Ma had elected to have it there rather than in the front room, because
it might often be too cold in the front room for the children to
practice, and besides it wouldn't be good for the piano. So the piano
became a beloved member of the family, and Betty began to give
instructions in music, wondering at herself that she knew how, for her
own music had been most desultory, and nobody had ever cared whether she
practiced or not. She had been allowed to ramble among the great masters
for the most part unconducted, with the meagerest technique, and her own
interpretation. She could read well and her sense of time and rhythm
were natural, else she would have made worse work of it than she did.
But she forthwith set herself to practicing, realizing that it might yet
stand her in good stead since she had to earn her living.

Little Emily and Bob stood one on either side and watched her as she
played, with wondering admiration, and when Betty went to help their
mother Bob would sit down and try to imitate what she had done. Failing,
he would fall headlong into the inevitable chopsticks, beating it out
with the air of a master.

It was the piano that brought to Betty's realization the first real
meaning of the Sabbath day. Bob came down early and went at the piano as
usual banging out chopsticks, and a one-fingered arrangement of "The
Long, Long Trail," while his mother was getting breakfast. Betty was
making the coffee, proud of the fact that she had learned how. But Bob
had accomplished only a brief hint of his regular program when the music
stopped suddenly and Betty glanced through the kitchen door to see Ma
standing with her hand on her son's shoulder and a look on her face she
had not seen before: It was quite gentle, but it was decided:

"No, Bob! We won't have that kinda music on Sunday," she said. "This is
God's day, an' we'll have all we can rightly do to keep it holy without
luggin' in week-day music to make us forget it. You just get t' work an'
learn 'Safely Through Another Week,' an' if you can't play it right you
get Lizzie to teach you."

Bob pouted:

"There ain't nothin' wrong with chopsticks, Ma. 'Tain't got words to
it."

"Don't make any diffrence. It b'longs to weekdays an' fun, an' anyhow it
makes you think of other things, an' you can't keep your mind on God.
That's what Sunday was made fer, to kinda tone us up to God, so's we
won't get so far away in the week that we won't be any kind of ready for
heaven some time. An' anyhow, 'tisn't seemly. You better go learn your
Golden Text, Bob. The minister'll be disappointed if you don't have it
fine."

Betty stood by the window thoughtfully looking out. Was that what Sunday
was made for, or was it only a quaint idea of this original woman? She
wished she knew. Perhaps some time she would know the minister's wife
well enough to ask. She would have liked to ask Ma more about it, but
somehow felt shy. But Ma herself was started now, and when she came back
to the kitchen, as if she felt some explanation was due the new inmate
of the family, she said:

"I don't know how you feel about it. I know city folks don't always hold
to the old ways. But it always seemed to me God meant us to stick to
Sunday, and make it diff'rent from other days. I never would let my
children go visitin', nor play ball an' we always tried to have
something good for supper fixed the night before. I heard somebody say a
long time ago that it says somewhere in the Bible that Sunday was meant
to be a sign forever between God and folks. The ones that keeps it are
his'n, an' them as don't aren't. Anyhow, that's the only day we have got
to kinda find out what's wanted of us. You wouldn't mind just playin'
hymns and Sunday things t'day, would you?"

"Oh, no," said Betty, interested. "I like it. It sounds so kind of safe,
and as if God cared. I never thought much about it before. You think God
really thinks about us and knows what we're doing then, don't you?"

"Why, sure, child. I don't just think, I _know_ He does. Hadn't you
never got onto that? Why, you poor little ducky, you! O' course He
does."

"I'd like to feel sure that He was looking out for me," breathed Betty
wistfully.

"Well, you can!" said Ma, hurrying back to see that her bacon didn't
burn. "It's easy as rollin' off a log."

"What would I have to do?"

"Why, just b'lieve."

"Believe?" asked Betty utterly puzzled. "Believe what?"

"Why, believe that He'll do it. He said 'Come unto me, an' I will give
you rest,' an' He said, 'Cast your burden on the Lord,' an' He said
'Castin' all yer care 'pon Him, fer He careth fer you,' an' a whole lot
more such things, an' you just got to take it fer straight, an' act on
it."

"But how could I?" asked Betty.

"Just run right up to your room now, while you're feelin' that way, an'
kneel down by your bed an' tell Him what you just told me," said Mrs.
Carson, stirring the fried potatoes with her knife to keep them from
burning. "It won't take you long, an' I'll tend the coffee. Just you
tell Him you want Him to take care of you, an' you'll believe what I
told you He said. It's all in the Bible, an' you can read it for
yourself, but I wouldn't take the time now. Just run along an' speak it
out with Him, and, then come down to breakfast."

Betty was standing by the kitchen door, her hand on her heart, as if
about to do some great wonderful thing that frightened her:

"But, Mrs. Carson, suppose, maybe, He might not be pleased with me.
Suppose I've done something that He doesn't like, something that makes
Him ashamed of me."

"Oh, why, didn't you know He fixed for all that when He sent His Son to
be the Saviour of the world? We all do wrong things, an' everybody has
sinned. But ef we're rightly sorry, He'll fergive us, and make us His
children."

Betty suddenly sat down in a chair near the door:

"But, Mrs. Carson, I'm not sure I _am_ sorry--at least I know I'm _not_.
I'm afraid I'd do it all over again if I got in the same situation."

Mrs. Carson stood back from the stove and surveyed her thoughtfully a
moment:

"Well, then, like's not it wasn't wrong at all, and if it wasn't He
ain't displeased. You can bank on that. You better go talk it out to
Him. Just get it off your mind. I'll hold up breakfast a minute while
you roll it on Him and depend on it he'll show you in plenty of time for
the next move."

Betty with her cheeks very red and her eyes shining went up to her
little cot, and with locked door knelt and tried to talk to God for the
first time in her life. It seemed queer to her, but when she arose and
hurried back to her duties she had a sense of having a real Friend who
knew all about her and could look after things a great deal better than
she could.

That night she went with Bob and Emily to the young people's meeting and
heard them talk about Christ familiarly as if they knew Him. It was all
strange and new and wonderful to Betty, and she sat listening and
wondering. The old question of whether she was pleasing her earthly
father was merging itself into the desire to please her Heavenly Father.

There were of course many hard and unpleasant things about her new life.
There were so many things to learn, and she was so awkward at work of
all kinds! Her hands seemed so small and inadequate when she tried to
wring clothes or scrub a dirty step. Then, too, her young charge, Elise
Hathaway, was spoiled and hard to please, and she was daily tried by the
necessity of inventing ways of discipline for the poor little neglected
girl which yet would not bring down a protest from her even more
undisciplined mother. If she had been independent she would not have
remained with Mrs. Hathaway, for sometimes the child was unbearable in
her naughty tantrums, and it took all her nerve and strength to control
her. She would come back to the little gray house too weary even to
smile, and the keen eye of Ma would look at her wisely and wonder if
something ought not to be done about it.

Betty felt that she must keep this place, of course, because it was
necessary for her to be able to pay some board. She could not be
beholden to the Carsons. And they had been so kind, and were teaching
her so many things, that it seemed the best and safest place she could
be in. So the days settled down into weeks, and a pleasant life grew up
about her, so different from the old one that more and more the
hallucination was with her that she had become another creature, and the
old life had gone out forever.

Of course as striking-looking a girl as Betty could not enter into the
life of a little town even as humbly as through the Carson home, without
causing some comment and speculation. People began to notice her. The
church ladies looked after her and remarked on her hair, her complexion,
and her graceful carriage, and some shook their heads and said they
should think Mrs. Hathaway would want to know a little more about her
before she put her only child in her entire charge; and they told weird
stories about girls they had known or heard of.

Down at the fire-house, which was the real clearing-house of Tinsdale
for all the gossip that came along and went the rounds, they took up the
matter in full session several evenings in succession. Some of the
younger members made crude remarks about Betty's looks, and some of the
older ones allowed that she was entirely too pretty to be without a
history. They took great liberties with their surmises. The only two,
the youngest of them all, who might have defended her, had been
unconsciously snubbed by her when they tried to be what Bobbie called
"fresh" with her, and so she was at their mercy. But if she had known it
she probably would have been little disturbed. They seemed so far
removed from her two worlds, so utterly apart from herself. It would not
have occurred to her that they could do her any harm.

One night the fire-house gang had all assembled save one, a little
shrimp of a good-for-nothing, nearly hairless, toothless, cunning-eyed,
and given to drink when he could lay lips on any. He had a wide loose
mouth with a tendency to droop crookedly, and his hands were always
clammy and limp. He ordinarily sat tilted back against the wall to the
right of the engine, sucking an old clay pipe. He had a way of often
turning the conversation to imply some deep mystery known only to
himself behind the life of almost any one discussed. He often added
choice embellishments to whatever tale went forth as authentic to go the
rounds of the village, and he acted the part of a collector of themes
and details for the evening conversations.

His name was Abijah Gage.

"Bi not come yet?" asked the fire chief settling a straw comfortably
between his teeth and looking around on the group. "Must be somepin'
doin'. Don't know when Bi's been away."

"He went up to town this mornin' early," volunteered Dunc Withers.
"Reckon he was thirsty. Guess he'll be back on the evenin' train. That's
her comin' in now."

"Bars all closed in the city," chuckled the chief. "Won't get much
comfort there."

"You bet Bi knows some place to get it. He won't come home thirsty,
that's sure."

"I donno, they say the lid's down pretty tight."

"Aw, shucks!" sneered Dunc. "Bet I could get all I wanted."

Just then the door opened and Abijah Gage walked in, with a toothless
grin all around.

"Hello, Bi, get tanked up, did yeh?" greeted the chief.

"Well, naow, an' ef I did, what's that to you?" responded Bi, slapping
the chief's broad shoulder with a folded newspaper he carried. "You
don't 'spose I'm goin' to tell, an' get my frien's in trouble?"

"Le's see yer paper, Bi," said Dunc, snatching at it as Bi passed to his
regular seat.

Bi surrendered his paper with the air of one granting a high favor and
sank to his chair and his pipe.

"How's crops in the city?" asked Hank Fielder, and Bi's tale was set
a-going. Bi could talk; that was one thing that always made him welcome.

Dunc was deep in the paper. Presently he turned it over:

"Whew!" he said speculatively. "If that don't look like that little
lollypop over to Carson's I'll eat my hat! What's her name?"

They all drew around the paper and leaned over Dunc's shoulder squinting
at the picture, all but Bi, who was lighting his pipe:

"They're as like as two peas!" said one.

"It sure must be her sister!" declared another.

"Don't see no resemblance 'tall," declared the chief, flinging back to
his comfortable chair. "She's got short hair, an she's only a kid. This
one's growed up!"

"She might a cut her hair," suggested one.

Bi pricked up his ears, narrowed his cunning eyes, and slouched over to
the paper, looking at the picture keenly:

"Read it out, Dunc!" he commanded.

"Five thousand dollars reward for information concerning Elizabeth
Stanhope!"

There followed a description in detail of her size, height, coloring,
etc.

An inscrutable look overspread Bi's face and hid the cunning in his
eyes. He slouched to his seat during the reading and tilted back
comfortably smoking, but he narrowed his eyes to a slit and spoke little
during the remainder of the evening. They discussed the picture and the
possibility of the girl in the paper being a relative of the girl at
Carson's, but as Bi did not come forward with information the subject
languished. Some one said he had heard the Carson kid call her Lizzie,
he thought, but he wasn't sure. Ordinarily Bi would have known the full
name, but Bi seemed to be dozing, and so the matter was finally dropped.
But the hounds were out and on the scent, and it was well for Betty
sleeping quietly in her little cot beneath the roof of the humble Carson
home, that she had committed her all to her heavenly Father before she
slept.

CHAPTER X

"WELL, he gave me notice t'day," said James Ryan sadly as Jane and he
rounded the corner from her boarding-house and turned toward their
favorite movie theater. "I been expectin' it, an' now it's come!"

Jane stopped short on the sidewalk appalled:

"He gave you notice!" she exclaimed, as if she could not believe it was
true. "Now, Jimmie! You don't mean it? Did he find any fault? He'd
better not! B'leeve me, if he did he gets a piece of _my_ mind, even if
I am a poor workin' girl!"

"Oh, no, he didn't find any fault," said Jimmie cheerfully. "He was
awful nice! He said he'd recommend me away up high. He's gonta give me
time every day to hunt a new place, an' he's gonta recommend me to some
of his rich friends."

"But what's the matter of him keepin' you? Did you ast him that?"

"Oh, he told me right out that things wasn't working the way he hoped
when he started; the war and all had upset his prospects, and he
couldn't afford to keep me. He's gonta take an office way down town and
do his own letters. He says if he ever succeeds in business and I'm free
to come to him he'll take me back. Oh, he's pleased with me all right!
He's a peach! He certainly is."

"Jimmie, what d'you tell him?"

"Tell him? There wasn't much for me to tell him, only I was sorry, and I
thanked him, and I told him I was gonta stick by him as long as I didn't
have a place. Of course I can't live on air, but seeing he's willing I
should go out and hunt a place every day, why I ain't that mean that I
can't write a few letters for him now and then. He don't have that many,
and it keeps me in practice. I s'pose I've got to get another place but
I haven't tried yet. I can't somehow bring myself to give him up. I kind
of wanted to stick in my first place a long time. It doesn't look well
to be changing."

"Well, if it ain't your fault, you know, when you can't help it,"
advised Jane.

They were seated in the theater by this time, and the screen claimed
their attention. It was just at the end of the funny reel, and both
forgot more serious matters in following the adventures of a dog and a
bear who were chasing each other through endless halls and rooms, to say
nothing of bathtubs, and wash boilers, and dining tables, and anything
that came in their way, with a shock to the people who happened to be
around when they passed. But suddenly the film ended and the
announcements for the next week began to flash on the screen.

"We must go to that, sure!" said Jimmie, nudging Jane, as the Mary
Pickford announcement was put on.

Then immediately afterward came the photograph of a beautiful girl, and
underneath in great letters:

          FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS' REWARD FOR ACCURATE
            INFORMATION AS TO THE PRESENT WHEREABOUTS
                  OF ELIZABETH STANHOPE

There followed further particulars and an address and the showing stayed
on the screen for a full minute.

Jane sat gripping the arms of the seat and trying to still the wild
excitement that possessed her, while her eyes looked straight into the
eyes of the little bride whom she had helped to escape on the night of
her wedding.

Jimmie took out his pencil and wrote down the address in shorthand, but
Jane did not notice. She was busy thinking what she ought to do.

"What do you s'pose they want her for?" she asked in a breathless
whisper, as a new feature film began to dawn on the screen.

"Oh, she's mebbe eloped," said the wise young man, "or there might be
some trouble about property. There mostly is."

Jane said no more, and the pictures began again, but her mind was not
following them. She was very quiet on the way home, and when Jimmie
asked her if she had a grouch on she shivered and said, no, she guessed
she was tired. Then she suddenly asked him what time he was going out to
hunt for another job. He told her he couldn't be sure. He would call her
up about noon and let her know. Could she manage to get out a while and
meet him? She wasn't sure either, but would see when he called her up.
And so they parted for the night.

The next morning when Reyburn entered his office Jimmie was already
seated at his typewriter. On Reyburn's desk lay a neatly typed copy of
the announcement that had been put on the screen the night before.

"What's this, Ryan?" he questioned as he took his seat and drew the
paper toward him.

"Something I saw last night on the screen at the movies, sir. I thought
it might be of interest."

"Were you thinking of trying for the reward?" asked Reyburn with a
comical smile. "What is it, anyway?" And he began to read.

"Oh, no sir!" said Jimmie. "_I_ couldn't, of course; but I thought mebbe
_you'd_ be able to find out something about her and get all that money.
That would help you through until you got started in your own business."

"H'm! That's kind of you, Ryan," said the young lawyer, reading the
paper with a troubled frown. "I'm afraid it's hardly in my line,
however. I'm not a detective, you know." He laid the paper down and
looked thoughtfully out of the window.

"Oh, of course not, sir!" Jimmie hastened to apologize. "Only you know a
lot of society folks in the city, and I thought you might think of some
way of finding out where she is. I know it isn't up to what you ought to
be doing, sir, but it wouldn't do any harm. You could work it through
me, you know, and nobody need ever know 'twas you got the reward. I'd be
glad to help you out doing all I could, but of course it would take your
brains to get the information, sir. You see, it would be to my interest,
because then you could afford to keep me, and--I like you, Mr. Reyburn,
I certainly do. I would hate to leave you."

"Well, now, I appreciate that, Ryan. It's very thoughtful of you. I
scarcely think there would be any possibility of my finding out anything
about this girl, but I certainly appreciate your thoughtfulness. I'll
make a note of it, and if anything turns up I'll let you know. I don't
believe, however, that I would care to go after a reward even through
someone else. You know, I was at that wedding, Ryan!" His eyes were
dreamily watching the smoke from a distant funnel over the roof-tops in
line with his desk.

"You were!" said Jimmie, watching his employer with rapt admiration. He
had no higher ambition than to look like Warren Reyburn and have an
office of his own.

"Yes, I was there," said Reyburn again, but his tone was so far off that
Jimmie dared approach no nearer, and resumed the letter he was typing.

About noon Jimmie called up the factory while Reyburn was out to lunch
and told Jane that he expected to go out at two o'clock. Could she meet
him and walk a little way with him? Jane said no, she couldn't, but she
would try and see him the next day, then he could tell her how he had
"made out."

At exactly five minutes after two, Jane, having watched from a telephone
booth in a drug store until Jimmie went by, hurried up to Reyburn's
office and tapped on the door, her heart in her mouth lest he should be
occupied with some one else and not be able to see her before her few
minutes of leave which she had obtained from the factory should have
expired.

Reyburn himself opened the door to her, and treated her as if she had
been a lady every inch, handing her a chair and speaking quite as if she
were attired in sealskin and diamonds.

She looked him over with bright eyes of approval. Jane was a born
sentimentalist, fed on the movies. Not for anything would she have had a
knight rescue her lady fair who did not look the part. She was entirely
satisfied with this one. In fact, she was almost tongue-tied with
admiration for the moment.

Then she rallied to the speech she had prepared:

"Mr. Reyburn," she said, "I came to see you about a matter of very great
importance. I heard you was a great lawyer, and I've got a friend that's
in trouble. I thought mebbe you could do something about it. But first,
I want to ast you a question, an' I want you to consider it perfectly
confidential!"

Jane took great credit to herself that she had assembled all these words
and memorized them so perfectly.

"Certainly!" said Reyburn gravely, wondering what kind of a customer he
had now.

"I don't want you to think I can't pay for it," said Jane, laying down a
five-dollar bill grandly. "I know you can't afford to waste your
valuable time even to answer a question."

"Oh, that's all right," said Reyburn heartily. "Let me hear what the
question is first. There may be no charge."

"No," said Jane hastily, laying the bill firmly on the desk before him.
"I shan't feel right astin' unless I know it's to be paid for."

"Oh, very well," said Reyburn, taking the bill and laying it to one
side. "Now, what is the question?"

"Well, Mr. Reyburn, will you please tell me what would anybody want to
offer a reward, a big reward, like a thousand dollars--or several of
them,--for information about any one? Could you think of any reason?"

Reyburn started. Reward again! This was uncanny. Probably this girl had
been to the movies and seen the same picture that Ryan had told him
about. But he smiled gravely and answered, watching her quizzically the
while:

"Well, they might love the person that had disappeared," he suggested at
random.

"Oh, no!" said Jane decidedly. "They didn't! I know that fer a fac'!
What else could it be?"

"Well, they might have a responsibility!" he said thoughtfully.

"No chance!" said Jane scornfully.

"Couldn't they be anxious, don't you think?"

"Not so's you'd notice it."

"Well, there might be some property to be divided, perhaps."

"I'd thought of that," said Jane, her face growing practical. "It would
have to be a good deal of property to make them offer a big reward,
wouldn't it?"

"I should think so," answered Reyburn politely, watching her plain eager
face amusedly. He could not quite get at her idea in coming to him.

"Would her coming of age have anything to do with it?" put Jane,
referring to a much folded paper she carried in her hand, as if she had
a written catechism which she must go through.

"It might." Reyburn was growing interested. This queer visitor evidently
had thought something out, and was being very cautious.

"I really can't answer very definitely without knowing more of the
circumstances," he said with sudden alarm lest the girl might take some
random answer and let serious matters hinge on his word.

"Well, there's just one more," she said, looking down at her paper. "If
a man was trying to make a girl marry him when she just hated him, could
anybody make her do it, and would anybody have a right to put her in an
insane 'sylum or anythin' ef she wouldn't?"

"Why, no, of course not! Where did you ever get such a ridiculous idea?"
He sat up suddenly, annoyed beyond expression over disturbing
suggestions that seemed to rise like a bevy of black bats all around the
borders of his mind.

"See here," he said, sitting up very straight. "I really can't answer
any more blind questions. I've got to know what I'm talking about. Why,
I may be saying the most impossible things without knowing it."

"I know," said Jane, looking at him gravely. "I've thought of that, but
you've said just the things I thought you would. Well, say, if I tell
you about it can you promise on yer honor you won't ever breathe a word
of it? Not to nobody? Whether you take the case or not?"

"Why, certainly, you can trust me to look out for any confidence you may
put in me. If you can't I should prefer that you say nothing more."

"Oh, I c'n trust you all right," said Jane smiling. "I just mean, would
you be 'lowed to keep it under yer hat?"

"Would I be allowed? What do you mean?"

"I mean would the law let you? You wouldn't _have_ to go an' tell where
she was or nothin' an' give her away? You'd be 'lowed to keep it on the
q. t. an' take care of her?"

"You mean would it be right and honorable for me to protect my client?
Why, certainly."

"Well, I mean you wouldn't get into no trouble if you did."

"Of course not."

"Well, then I'll tell you."

CHAPTER XI

JANE opened a small shabby handbag, and took out a folded newspaper,
opening it up and spreading it on the desk before him. "There!" she
said, and then watched his face critically.

Reyburn looked, and found himself looking into Betty's eyes. Only a
newspaper cut, and poor at that, but wonderfully real and mournful, as
they had struck him when she lifted them for that swift glance before
she sank in the church aisle.

"Where did you get this?" he asked, his voice suddenly husky.

"Out o' the mornin' paper." Her tone was low and excited. "Were you
wanting to try for the reward?" Reyburn asked.

There was a covert sneer in the question from which the girl shrank
perceptibly. She sprang to her feet, her eyes flashing:

"If that's what you take me for, I better be goin'!" she snapped and
reached out her hand for the paper. But Reyburn's hand covered the
paper, and his tone was respectful and apologetic as he said:

"Excuse me, I didn't quite understand, I see. Sit down, please. You and
I must understand each other or there is no use in our talking. You can
trust me to keep this conversation entirely to myself, whatever the
outcome. Will you tell me what it is you want of me?"

Jane subsided into a chair, tears of excitement springing into her eyes.

"Well, you see, it's pretty serious business," she said, making a dab at
the corner of one eye. "I thought I could trust you, or I wouldn't a
come. But you gotta take me on trust, too."

"Of course," said Reyburn. "Now, what have you to do with this girl? Do
you know where she is?"

"I certainly do!" said Jane, "but I ain't a-goin' ta tell until you say
if there's anything you can do fer her. 'Cause you see, if you can't
find a way to help her, I've gotta do it myself, an' it might get you
into trouble somehow fer you to know what you ain't supposed to know."

"I see," said Reyburn, meekly. "Well, what are you going to tell me? Am
I allowed to ask that?"

Jane grinned.

"Say, you're kiddin' me! I guess you are all right. Well, I'll just tell
you all about it. One night last November,--you can see the date there
in the paper, I was goin' home to my boardin' house in Camac Street,
an' I was passin' the side of that church on 18th an' Spruce, where the
weddin' was--you know, fer you was there!"

Reyburn looked at her astonished.

"How did you know I was there?"

"I saw you through the window, over against the wall to the street side
of the altar," said Jane calmly.

"How did you know me?"

"Oh, somebody I know pointed you out once an' said you was goin' to be
one of the risin' lawyers of the day," she answered nonchalantly, her
face quite serious.

A flicker of amusement passed like a ray of light through his eyes, but
his face was entirely grave as he ignored the compliment.

"Go on!"

"I saw there was a weddin' an' I stopped to watch a minute, 'cause I
expect to get married myself some day, an' I wanted to see how they did
things. But I couldn't get near the door, an' the windows were all high
up. I could only see folks who were standing up like you were. So I
thought I'd go on. I turned the corner and went long-side the church
listenin' to the music, an' just as I passed a big iron gate at the
back end of the church somebody grabbed me an' begged me to help 'em. I
looked round, an' there was the bride, all in her white togs, with the
prettiest white satin slippers, in the wet an' mud! I tried to get her
line, but she cried out somebody was comin' back in the passageway, so I
slipped off my coat an' hat and whisked her into 'em an' clapped my
rubbers over her satin shoes, and we beat it round the corner. I took
her to my room, an' gave her some supper. She was all in. Then I put her
to bed, an' she told me a little bit about it. She didn't tell me much.
Only that they had been tryin' fer a long time back to make her marry a
man she hated, an' now they'd almost tricked her into it, an' she'd die
if she had to do it. She wanted to exchange clothes with me, cause, of
course, she couldn't get anywhere togged out that way, so we changed
things, an' I fixed her up. In the mornin' I ran out an' got a paper,
an' found they was sayin' she was temporary insane, an' stuff like that,
an' so I saw their game was tryin' to get her in a 'sylum till they
could make her do what they wanted. I fixed her up an' got her off to a
place I know where she'd be safe. An' she's got a job an' doin' real
well. But now they've got this here reward business out everywhere in
the papers an' the movies, she ain't safe nowhere. An' I want somebody
that's wiser'n me to take a holt an' do somethin'. I can't pay much, but
I'll pay a little every month as long's I live ef it takes that long to
pay yer bill, an' I have a notion she may have some money herself,
though she didn't say nothin' about it. But there's a ring she left with
me to sell, to pay fer what I gave her. It oughtta be worth somethin'.
It looks real. I ain't sold it. I couldn't. I thought she might want it
sometime----"

But Reyburn interrupted her excitedly.

"Do you mean to say that Miss Stanhope is in the city and you know where
she is?"

"Now, don't get excited," warned Jane coolly. "I didn't say she was in
this city, did I? I didn't say where she was, did I? I said she was
safe."

"But are you aware that you have told me a very strange story? What
proof can you give me that it is true?"

Jane looked at him indignantly.

"Say, I thought you was goin' to trust me? I have to trust you, don't I?
Course you don't know who I am, an' I haven't told you, but I've got a
good p'sition myself, an' I don't go round tellin' privarications! An'
there's the weddin' dress, an' veil and fixin's! I got them. You can see
'em if you like,--that is pervided I know what you're up to! I ain't
taking any chances till I see what you mean to do."

"I beg your pardon," said Reyburn, trying to smile assurance once more.
"You certainly must own this whole thing is enough to make anybody
doubt."

"Yes, it is," said Jane. "I was some upset myself, havin' a thing like
that happen to me, a real millionairess bride drop herself down on my
hands just like that, an' I 'spose it _is_ hard to b'lieve. But I can't
waste much more time now. I gotta get back to my job. Is there anything
can be done to keep 'em from gettin' her again?"

"I should most certainly think so," said Reyburn, "but I would have to
know her side of the story, the whole of it, before I could say just
what!"

"Well, s'pose you found there wasn't anythin' you could do to help her,
would you go an' tell on her?"

Reyburn leaned back in his chair and smiled at his unique client:

"I shall have to quote your own language. 'What do you take me for?'"

"A white man!" said Jane suddenly, and showed all her fine teeth in an
engaging smile. "Say, you're all right. Now, I gotta go. When will you
tell me what you can do?" She glanced anxiously at her little
leather-bound wrist watch. It was almost time for Jimmie to return.
Jimmie mustn't find her here. He wouldn't understand, and what Jimmie
didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

"Well, this ought to be attended to, at once, if anything is to be
done," he said eagerly. "Let me see. I have an engagement at five. How
would seven o'clock do? Could I call at your boarding-house? Would there
be any place where we could talk uninterrupted?"

"Sure," said Jane, rising. "I'll get my landlady to let me have her
settin' room fer an hour."

"Meantime, I'll think it over and try to plan something."

Jane started down the long flights of stairs, not daring to trust to the
elevator, lest she should come face to face with Jimmie and have to
explain.

Reyburn stood with his back to the room, his hands in his pockets,
frowning and looking out the window, when Jimmie entered a moment later.

"I hope I'm not late, sir?" he said anxiously, as he hung up his hat and
sat down at his typewriter. "I had to wait. The man was out."

"Oh, that's all right, Ryan," said his employer, obviously not listening
to his explanation. "I'm going out now, Ryan. I may not be back this
afternoon. Just see that everything is all right."

"Very well, sir."

Reyburn went out, then opened the door and put his head back in the
room.

"I may have to go out of town to-night, Ryan. I'm not sure. Something
has come up. If I'm not in to-morrow, could you--would you mind just
staying here all day and looking after things? I may need you. Of course
you'll lock up and leave the card out when you go to lunch."

"Very well, sir."

"I'll keep in touch with you in case I'm delayed," and Reyburn was off
again. When the elevator had clanked down to the next floor Jimmie went
to the window and looked dreamily out over the roofs of the city:

"Aw!" he breathed joyously. "Now I'll bet he's going to do something
about that reward!"

Reyburn hurried down the street to the office of an old friend where he
had a bit of business as an excuse, and asked a few casual questions
when he was done. Then he went on to a telephone booth and called up a
friend of his mother's, with whom he had a brief gossip, ostensibly to
give a message from his mother, contained in her last letter to him.
None of the questions that he asked were noticeable. He merely led the
conversation into certain grooves. The lady was an old resident and well
known in the higher social circles. She knew all there was to know about
everybody and she loved to tell it. She never dreamed that he had any
motive in leading her on.

He dropped into a bank and asked a few questions, called up an address
they gave him and made another inquiry, then dropped around to his
cousin's home for a few minutes, where he allowed her to tell all she
knew about the Stanhope wedding they had attended together, and the
different theories concerning the escaped bride. Quite casually he asked
if she knew whether the bride had property of her own, if so who were
her guardians. His cousin thought she knew a lot, but, sifting it down,
he discovered that it was nearly all hearsay or surmise.

When he reached Jane Carson's boarding house he found that young woman
ensconced in a tiny room, nine by twelve, a faded ingrain carpet on the
floor, a depressed looking bed lounge against the bleary wall-paper,
beneath crayon portraits of the landlady's dead husband and sons. There
was a rocking-chair, a trunk, a cane-seat chair, and an oil stove turned
up to smoking point in honor of the caller, but there was little room
left for the caller. On the top of the trunk reposed a large pasteboard
box securely tied.

Jane, after a shy greeting, untied the strings and opened the cover,
having first carefully slipped the bolt of the door.

"You can't be too careful," she said. "You never can tell."

Reyburn stood beside her and looked in a kind of awe at the glistening
white, recognized the thick texture of the satin, the rare quality of
the rose-point lace with which it was adorned, caught the faint
fragrance of faded orange blossoms wafting from the filmy mist of the
veil as Jane lifted it tenderly; then leaned over and touched a finger
to the pile of whiteness, reverently, as though he were paying a tribute
at a lovely shrine.

Jane even unwrapped the little slippers, one at a time, and folded them
away again, and they said no word until it was all tied back in its
papers, Reyburn assisting with the strings.

"Now, ef you don't mind waitin' a minute I guess it would be safer to
put it away now," she said as she slipped the bolt and ran upstairs.

She was back in a minute and sat down opposite to him, drawing out from
the neck of her blouse a ribbon with a heavy glittering circlet at its
end.

"Here's the ring." She laid it in his palm. He took it, wondering, a
kind of awe still upon him that he should be thus handling the intimate
belongings of that little unknown bride whom he had seen lying
unconscious in a strange church a few short months before. How strange
that all this should have come to him when many wiser, more nearly
related, were trying their best to get some clue to the mystery!

He lifted the ring toward the insufficient gas jet to make out the
initials inside, and copied them down in his note-book.

"Take good care of that. It is valuable," he said as he handed it back
to her.

"Mebbe I better give it to you," she half hesitated.

"You've taken pretty good care of it so far," he said. "I guess you've a
better right to it than I. Only don't let anybody know you've got it.
Now, I've been making inquiries, and I've found out a few things, but
I've about come to the conclusion that I can't do much without seeing
the lady. Do you suppose she would see me? Is she very far away?"

"When do you want to go?" asked Jane.

"At once," he answered decidedly. "There's no time to waste if she is
really in danger, as you think."

Jane's eyes glittered with satisfaction.

"There's a train at ten-thirty. You'll get there in the morning. I've
written it all down here on a paper so you can't make any mistakes. I've
written her a letter so she'll understand and tell you everythin'. I'll
wire Ma, too, so she'll let you see her. Ma might not size you up
right."

Reyburn wondered at the way he accepted his orders from this coolly
impudent girl, but he liked her in spite of himself.

In a few minutes more he was out in the street again, hurrying to his
own apartment, where he put together a few necessities in a bag and went
to the train.

CHAPTER XII

IT was one of those little ironies of fate that are spoken about so
much, that when Warren Reyburn alighted from the train in Tinsdale
Abijah Gage should be supporting one corner of the station, and
contributing a quid now and then to the accumulations of the week
scattered all about his feet.

He spotted the stranger at once and turned his cunning little eyes upon
him, making it obvious that he was bulging with information. It was,
therefore, quite natural, when Reyburn paused to take his bearings, that
Bi should speak up and inquire if he was looking for some one. Reyburn
shook his head and passed on, but Bi was not to be headed off so easily
as that. He shuffled after him:

"Say!" he said, pointing to a shackley horse and buckboard that stood
near, belonging to a pal over at the freight house. "Ef you want a lift
I'll take you along."

"Thank you, no," said Reyburn, smiling; "I'm not going far."

"Say!" said Bi again as he saw his quarry about to disappear. "You name
ain't Bains, is it?"

"No!" said Reyburn, quite annoyed by the persistent old fellow.

"From New York?" he hazarded cheerfully.

"No," answered Reyburn, turning to go. "You must excuse me. I'm in a
hurry."

"That's all right," said Bi contentedly. "I'll walk a piece with you. I
was lookin' fer a doctor to take down to see a sick child. A doctor from
New York. You ain't by any chance a doctor, are you?" Bi eyed the big
leather bag inquiringly.

"No," said Reyburn, laughing in spite of his annoyance. "I'm only a
lawyer." And with a bound he cleared the curb and hurried off down the
street, having now recognized the direction described in Jane's diagram
of Tinsdale.

Abijah Gage looked after him with twinkling eyes of dry mirth, and
slowly sauntered after him, watching him until he entered the little
unpainted gate of the Carson house and tapped at the old gray door. Then
Bi lunged across the street and entered a path that ran along the
railroad track for a few rods, curving suddenly into a stretch of vacant
lots. On a convenient fence rail with a good outlook toward the west end
of the village he ensconced himself and set about whittling a whistle
from some willow stalks. He waited until he saw Bobbie Carson hurry off
toward Hathaway's house and return with Lizzie Hope; waited hopefully
until the stranger finally came out of the house again, touching his hat
gracefully to the girl as she stood at the open door. Then he hurried
back to the station again, and was comfortably settled on a tub of
butter just arrived by freight, when Reyburn reached there. He was much
occupied with his whistle, and never seemed to notice, but not a
movement of the stranger escaped him, and when the Philadelphia express
came by, and the stranger got aboard the parlor car, old Bi Gage swung
his lumbering length up on the back platform of the last car. The hounds
were hot on the trail now.

It was several years since Bi Gage had been on so long a journey, but he
managed to enjoy the trip, and kept in pretty good touch with the parlor
car, although he was never in evidence. If anybody had told Warren
Reyburn as he let himself into his apartment late that night that he was
being followed, he would have laughed and told them it was an
impossibility. When he came out to the street the next morning and swung
himself into a car that would land him at his office, he did not see the
lank flabby figure of the toothless Bi standing just across the block,
and keeping tab on him from the back platform, nor notice that he slid
into the office building behind him and took the same elevator up,
crowding in behind two fat men and effacing himself against the wall of
the cage. Reyburn was reading his paper, and did not look up. The figure
slid out of the elevator after him and slithered into a shadow, watching
him, slipping softly after, until sure which door he took, then waited
silently until sure that the door was shut. No one heard the slouching
footsteps come down the marble hall. Bi Gage always wore rubbers when he
went anywhere in particular. He had them on that morning. He took
careful note of the name on the door: "_Warren Reyburn_,
Attorney-at-Law," and the number. Then he slid down the stairs as
unobserved as he had come, and made his way to a name and number on a
bit of paper from his pocket which he consulted in the shelter of a
doorway.

When Warren Reyburn started on his first trip to Tinsdale his mind was
filled with varying emotions. He had never been able to quite get away
from the impression made upon him by that little white bride lying so
still amid her bridal finery, and the glowering bridegroom above her. It
epitomized for him all the unhappy marriages of the world, and he felt
like starting out somehow in hot pursuit of that bridegroom and making
him answer for the sadness of his bride. Whenever the matter had been
brought to his memory he had always been conscious of the first gladness
he had felt when he knew she had escaped. It could not seem to him
anything but a happy escape, little as he knew about any of the people
who played the principal parts in the little tragedy he had witnessed.

Hour after hour as he sat in the train and tried to sleep or tried to
think he kept wondering at himself that he was going on this "wild goose
chase," as he called it in his innermost thoughts. Yet he knew he had to
go. In fact, he had known it from the moment James Ryan had shown him
the advertisement. Not that he had ever had any idea of trying for that
horrible reward. Simply that his soul had been stirred to its most
knightly depths to try somehow to protect her in her hiding. Of course,
it had been a mere crazy thought then, with no way of fulfilment, but
when the chance had offered of really finding her and asking if there
was anything she would like done, he knew from the instant it was
suggested that he was going to do it, even if he lost every other
business chance he ever had or expected to have, even if it took all his
time and every cent he could borrow. He knew he had to try to find that
girl! The thought that the only shelter between her and the great awful
world lay in the word of an untaught girl like Jane Carson filled him
with terror for her. If that was true, the sooner some one of
responsibility and sense got to her the better. The questions he had
asked of various people that afternoon had revealed more than he had
already guessed of the character of the bridegroom to whom he had taken
such a strong dislike on first sight.

Thus he argued the long night through between the fitful naps he caught
when he was not wondering if he should find her, and whether he would
know her from that one brief sight of her in church. How did he know but
this was some game put up on him to get him into a mix-up? He must go
cautiously, and on no account do anything rash or make any promises
until he had first found out all about her.

When morning dawned he was in a state of perturbation quite unusual for
the son and grandson of renowned lawyers noted for their calmness and
poise under all circumstances. This perhaps was why the little incident
with Abijah Gage at the station annoyed him so extremely. He felt he was
doing a questionable thing in taking this journey at all. He certainly
did not intend to reveal his identity or business to this curious old
man.

The little gray house looked exactly as Jane had described it, and as he
opened the gate and heard the rusty chain that held it clank he had a
sense of having been there before.

He was pleasantly surprised, however, when the door was opened by Emily,
who smiled at him out of shy blue eyes, and stood waiting to see what he
wanted. It was like expecting a viper and finding a flower. Somehow he
had not anticipated anything flower-like in Jane's family. The mother,
too, was a surprise when she came from her ironing, and, pushing her
wavy gray hair back from a furrowed brow lifted intelligent eyes that
reminded him of Jane, to search his face. Ma did not appear flustered.
She seemed to be taking account of him and deciding whether or not she
would be cordial to him.

"Yes, I had a telegram from Jane this morning," she was scanning his
eyes once more to see whether there was a shadow of what she called
"shiftiness" in them. "Come in," she added grudgingly.

He was not led into the dining-room, but seated on one of the best
varnished chairs in the "parlor," as they called the little unused front
room. He felt strangely ill at ease and began to be convinced that he
was on the very wildest of wild goose chases. To think of expecting to
find Elizabeth Stanhope in a place like this! If she ever had been here
she certainly must have flown faster than she had from the church on her
wedding night.

So, instead of beginning as he had planned, to put a list of logically
prepared keen questions to a floundering and suspecting victim, he found
the clear eyes of Ma looking into his unwaveringly and the wise tongue
of Ma putting him through a regular orgy of catechism before she would
so much as admit that she had ever heard of a girl named Lizzie Hope.
Then he bethought him of her daughter's letter and handed it over for
her to read.

"Well," she admitted at last, half satisfied, "she isn't here at
present. I sent her away when I found you was comin'. I wasn't sure I'd
let you see her at all if I didn't like your looks."

"That's right, Mrs. Carson," he said heartily, with real admiration in
his voice. "I'm glad she has some one so careful to look out for her.
Your daughter said she was in a good safe place, and I begin to see she
knew what she was talking about."

Then the strong look around Ma's lips settled into the sweeter one, and
she sent Bob after the girl.

"Are you a friend of hers?" she asked, watching him keenly.

"No," said Reyburn. "I've never seen her but once. She doesn't know me
at all."

"Are you a friend of her--family?"

"Oh, no!"

"Or any of her friends or relations?" Ma meant to be comprehensive.

"No. I'm sorry I am not. I am a rather recent comer to the city where
she made her home, I understand."

Ma looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. It wouldn't have been called
a stare, it was too kindly for that, but Reyburn thought to himself that
he would not have liked to have borne her scrutiny if he had anything to
conceal, for he felt as if she might read the truth in his eyes.

"Are you--please excuse me for askin'--but are you a member of any
church?"

Reyburn flushed, and wanted to laugh, but was embarrassed in spite of
himself:

"Why, yes--I'm a member," he said slowly, then with a frank lifting of
his eyes to her troubled gaze, "I united with the church when I was a
mere kid, but I'm afraid I'm not much of a member. I really am not what
you'd call 'working' at it much nowadays. I go to morning service
sometimes, but that's about all. I don't want to be a hypocrite."

He wondered as he spoke why he took the trouble to answer the woman so
fully. Her question was in a way impertinent, much like the way her
daughter talked. Yet she seemed wholly unconscious of it.

"I know," she assented sorrowfully. "There's lots of them in the church.
We have 'em, too, even in our little village. But still, after all, you
can't help havin' confidence more in them that has 'named the name' than
in them that has not."

Reyburn looked at her curiously and felt a sudden infusion of respect
for her. She was putting the test of her faith to him, and he knew by
the little stifled sigh that he had been found wanting.

"I s'pose lawyers don't have much time to think about being Christians,"
she apologized for him.

He felt impelled to be frank with her:

"I'm afraid I can't urge that excuse. Unfortunately I have a good deal
of time on my hands now. I've just opened my office and I'm waiting for
clients."

"Where were you before that? You did not just get through studying?"

He saw she was wondering whether he was wise enough to help her protege.

"No, I spent the last three years in France."

"Up at the front?" The pupils of her eyes dilated eagerly.

"Yes, in every drive," he answered, wondering that a woman of this sort
should be so interested now that the war was over.

"And you came back safe!" she said slowly, looking at him with a kind of
wistful sorrow in her eyes. "My boy was shot the first day he went over
the top."

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Reyburn gently, a sudden tightness in his throat.

"But it was all right." She flashed a dazzling smile at him through the
tears that came into her eyes. "It wasn't as if he wasn't ready. Johnny
was always a good boy, an' he joined church when he was fourteen, an'
always kep' his promises. He used to pray every night just as faithful,
an' read his Bible. I've got the little Testament he carried all
through. His chaplain sent it to me. It's got a bullet hole through it,
and blood-marks, but it's good to me to look at, 'cause I know Johnny's
with his Saviour. He wasn't afraid to die. He said to me before he left,
he says: 'Ma, if anythin' happens to me it's all right. You know, Ma, I
ain't forgettin' what you taught me, an' I ain't forgettin' Christ is
with me.'"

Mrs. Carson wiped her eyes furtively, and tried to look cheerful.
Reyburn wished he knew how to comfort her.

"It makes a man feel mean," he said at last, trying to fit his toe into
the pattern of the ingrain carpet, "to come home alive and whole when so
many poor fellows had to give their lives. I've often wondered how I
happened to get through."

She looked at him tenderly:

"Perhaps your Heavenly Father brought you back to give you more chance
to do things for Him, an' get ready to die when your time comes."

There was something startling to this self-composed city chap in hearing
a thing like this from the lips of the mother whose beloved son was gone
forever beyond her teaching but had "been ready." Reyburn looked at her
steadily, soberly, and then with a queer constriction in his throat he
looked down at the floor thoughtfully and said:

"Perhaps He did."

"Well, I can't help bein' glad you're a church member, anyhow," said
Mrs. Carson, rising to look out of the window. "She needs a Christian to
help her, an' I'd sooner trust a Christian. If you really meant it when
you joined church you've got somethin' to fall back on anyhow. Here she
comes. I'll just go an' tell her you're in here."

CHAPTER XIII

BETTY, her eyes wide with fear, her face white as a lily, appeared like
a wraith at the parlor door and looked at him. It gave Reyburn a queer
sensation, as if a picture one had been looking at in a story book
should suddenly become alive and move and stare at one. As he rose and
came forward he still seemed to see like a dissolving view between them
the little huddled bride on the floor of the church. Then he suddenly
realized that she was trembling.

"Please don't be afraid of me, Miss Stanhope," he said gently. "I have
only come to help you, and if after you have talked with me you feel
that you would rather I should have nothing to do with your affairs I
will go away and no one in the world shall be the wiser for it. I give
you my word of honor."

"Oh!" said Betty, toppling into a chair near by. "I--guess--I'm not
afraid of you. I just didn't know who you might be----!" She stopped,
caught her breath and tried to laugh, but it ended sorrily, almost in a
sob.

"Well, I don't wonder," said Reyburn, trying to find something
reassuring to say. "The truth is, I was rather upset about you. I
didn't quite know who you might turn out to be, you see!"

"Oh!" Betty's hand slipped up to her throat, and her lips quivered as
she tried to smile.

"Please don't feel that way," he said, "or I'll go away at once." He was
summoning all his courage and hoping she wasn't going to break down and
cry. How little she was, and sweet! Her eyes pleaded, just as they did
in that one look in the church. How could anybody be unkind to her?

"I'm quite all right," said Betty with a forced smile, siting up very
straight.

"Perhaps I'd better introduce myself," he said, trying to speak in a
very commonplace tone. "I'm just a lawyer that your friend Miss Jane
Carson sent out to see if I could be of any service to you. It may
possibly make things a little easier for you if I explain that while I
never had heard of you before, and have no possible connection with your
family or friends, I happened to be at your wedding!"

"Oh!" said Betty with a little agonized breath.

"Do you know Mrs. Bryce Cochrane?" he asked.

Betty could not have got any whiter, but her eyes seemed to blanch a
trifle.

"A little," she said in a very small voice.

"Well, she is my cousin."

"Oh!" said Betty again.

"Her husband was unable to accompany her to the wedding, and so I went
in his place to escort Isabel. I knew nothing of your affairs either
before or after the wedding, until this announcement was brought to my
notice, and Miss Carson called on me."

Betty took the paper in her trembling fingers, and looked into her own
pictured eyes. Then everything seemed to swim before her for a moment.
She pressed her hand against her throat and set her white lips firmly,
looking up at the stranger with a sudden terror and comprehension.

"You want to get that five thousand dollars!" she said, speaking the
words in a daze of trouble. "Oh, I haven't got five thousand dollars!
Not now! But perhaps I could manage to get it if you would be good
enough to wait just a little, till I can find a way. Oh, if you knew
what it means to me!"

Warren Reyburn sprang to his feet in horror, a flame of anger leaping
into his eyes.

"Five thousand dollars be hanged!" he said fiercely. "Do I look like
that kind of a fellow? It may seem awfully queer to you for an utter
stranger to be butting into your affairs like this unless I did have
some ulterior motive, but I swear to you that I have none. I came out
here solely because I saw that you were in great likelihood of being
found by the people from whom you had evidently run away. Miss Stanhope,
I stood where I could watch your face when you came up the aisle at your
wedding, and something in your eyes just before you dropped made me wish
I could knock that bridegroom down and take care of you somehow until
you got that hurt look out of your face. I know it was rather ridiculous
for an utter stranger to presume so far, but when I saw that the sleuths
were out after you, and when the knowledge of your whereabouts was put
into my hands without the seeking, I wouldn't have been a man if I
hadn't come and offered my services. I'm not a very great lawyer, nor
even a very rising one, as your Miss Carson seems to think, but I'm a
man with a soul to protect a woman who is in danger, and if that's you,
I'm at your service. If not, you've only to say so and I'll take the
next train home and keep my mouth shut!"

He took his watch out and looked at it hastily, although he had not the
slightest idea what it registered, nor what time the next train for home
left. He looked very tall and strong and commanding as he stood in his
dignity waiting for her answer, and Betty looked up like a little child
and trusted him.

"Oh! Please forgive me!" she cried. "I've been so frightened ever since
Bob came after me. I couldn't think you had come for any good, because I
didn't know any one in the world who would want to help me."

"Certainly!" said Warren Reyburn with a lump in his throat, sitting down
quickly to hide his emotion. "Please consider me a friend, and command
me."

"Thank you," said Betty taking a deep breath and trying to crowd back
the tears. "I'm afraid there isn't any way to help me, but I'm glad to
have a friend, and I'm sorry I was so rude."

"You weren't rude, and that was a perfectly natural conclusion from my
blundering beginning," he protested, looking at the adorable waves of
hair that framed her soft cheeks. "But there is always a way to help
people when they are in trouble, and I'm here to find out what it is. Do
you think you could trust me enough to tell me what it's all about? Miss
Carson didn't seem to know much or else she didn't feel free to say."

"I didn't tell her much," said Betty, lifting her sea-blue eyes. "She
was a stranger, too, you know."

"Well, she's a mighty good friend of yours, I'll say, and she's acted
in a very wise manner. She took more precautions than an old detective
would have done. She told me only that some one was trying to make you
marry a man you did not wish to marry. Is that correct?"

Betty shivered involuntarily and a wave of color went over her white
face.

"It sounds queer," she said, "as if I hadn't any character or force
myself, but you don't understand. No one would understand unless they
knew it all, and had been through it for years. At first I didn't quite
understand it myself. I'd better tell you the story. I thought I never
could tell any one, because they were my father's family, and I know he
would shrink so from having it known, but I'm sure he wouldn't blame me
now."

"He certainly would not blame you, Miss Stanhope. I have heard that your
father was a wonderful man, with high principles. I feel sure he would
justify you in appealing to some one who was willing to advise you in a
strait like this. You know no woman need ever marry any man against her
will."

"Not if it were her father's dying wish?"

"Certainly not. Miss Stanhope, did your father love you?"

"Oh, I'm sure he did. He was the most wonderful father! I've often
thought that he would never have asked it of me if he had realized----"

"Did he ever during his lifetime seem to wish you to be unhappy?"

"Never! That was the strange part of it. But you see he didn't know how
I felt. I think I'd better tell you all about it."

"That would be the better way, if it won't be too hard for you."

Betty clasped her small hands together tightly and began:

"My own mother died when I was quite a little girl, so father and I were
a great deal to each other. He used to look after my lessons himself,
and was always very careful what kind of teachers I had. He was mother
and father both to me. When I was ten years old my governess died
suddenly while father was away on a business trip, and one of our
neighbors was very kind to me, coming in and looking after the servants
and everything and keeping me over at her house for a few days till
father got back. She had a widowed sister visiting her, a rather young
woman who was very beautiful. At least I thought she was beautiful then,
and she made a great pet of me, so that I grew fond of her, although I
had not liked her at first.

"After father came home she used to slip over every day to see me while
he was at his business, and he was grateful to her for making me happy.
Then he found out that she was in trouble, had lost her money or
something, and wanted to get a position teaching. He arranged to have
her teach me, and so she came to our house to stay.

"Somehow after that I never seemed to see so much of my father as I used
to do, for she was always there, but at first I didn't care, because she
was nice to me, and always getting up things to keep me busy and happy.
She would make my father buy expensive toys and books and games for me,
and fine clothes, and so of course I was pleased. In about a year my
father married her, and at first it seemed very beautiful to me to have
a real mother, but little by little I began to see that she preferred to
be alone with my father and did not want me around so much. It was very
hard to give up the companionship of my father, but my stepmother kept
me busy with other things, so that I really didn't think much about it
while it was first happening.

"But one day there came a letter. I remember it came while we were at
breakfast, and my father got very white and stern when he read it, and
handed it over to my mother and asked whether it was true, and then she
began to cry and sent me from the table. I found out a few days after
that that my stepmother had two sons, both older than myself, and that
she had not told my father. It was through some trouble they had got
into at school which required quite a large sum of money to cover
damages that my father discovered it, and he was terribly hurt that she
should have concealed it from him. I learned all this from the servants,
who talked when they thought I was not within hearing. There were days
and days when my father scarcely spoke at the table, and when he looked
at me it made a pain go through my heart, he looked so stern and sad. My
stepmother stayed a great deal in her room and looked as if she had been
crying. But after a few weeks things settled down a good deal as they
had been, only that my father never lost that sad troubled look. There
was some trouble about my stepmother's sons, too, for there was a great
deal of argument between her and my father, of which I only heard
snatches, and then one day they came home to stay with us. Something had
happened at the school where they were that they could not stay any
longer. I can remember distinctly the first night they ate dinner with
us. It seemed to me that it was like a terrific thunderstorm that never
quite broke. Everybody was trying to be nice and polite, but underneath
it all there was a kind of lightning of all kinds of feelings, hurt
feelings and wrong ones and right ones all mixed up.

"Only the two boys didn't seem to feel it much. They sort of took things
for granted, as if that had always been their home, and they didn't act
very polite. It seemed to trouble my father, who looked at them so
severely that it almost choked me, and I couldn't go on eating my
dinner. He didn't seem like my dear father when he looked like that. I
always used to watch my father, and he seemed to make the day for me. If
he was sad, then I was sad; and if he was glad then I was happy all
over, until one day my stepmother noticed me and said: 'See, dear little
Elizabeth is trembling. You ought not to speak that way before her,
Charles.' And then father looked at me, and all suddenly I learned to
smile when I didn't feel like it. I smiled back to him just to let him
know it didn't matter what he did, I would love him anyhow!"

During the recital Reyburn had sat with courteous averted gaze as though
he would not trouble her with more of his presence than was absolutely
necessary. Now he gave her a swift glance.

Betty's eyes were off on distance, and she was talking from the depths
of her heart, great tears welling into her eyes. All at once she
remembered the stranger:

"I beg your pardon," she said, and brushed her hand across her eyes. "I
haven't gone over it to any one ever, and I forgot you would not be
interested in details."

"Please don't mind me. I am interested in every detail you are good
enough to give me. It all makes the background of the truth, you know,
and that is what I am after," said Reyburn, deeply touched. "I think you
are wonderful to tell me all this. I shall regard it most sacredly."

Betty flashed a look of gratitude at him, and noticed the sympathy in
his face. It almost unnerved her, but she went on:

"The oldest boy was named Bessemer, and he wasn't very good-looking. He
was very tall and awkward, and always falling over things. He had little
pale eyes, and hardly any chin. His teeth projected, too, and his hair
was light and very straight and thin. His mother didn't seem to love him
very much, even when he was a little boy. She bullied him and found
fault with him continually, and quite often I felt very sorry for him,
although I wasn't naturally attracted to him. He wasn't really
unpleasant to me. We got along very nicely, although I never had much to
do with him. There wasn't much to him.

"The other brother, Herbert, was handsome like his mother, only dark,
with black curly hair, black wicked eyes, and a big, loose, cruel mouth.
His mother just idolized him, and he knew it. He could make her do
anything on earth. He used to force Bessemer into doing wrong things,
too, things that he was afraid to do himself, because he knew father
would not be so hard on Bessemer as on him. For father had taken a great
dislike to Herbert, and it was no wonder. He seemed to have no idea at
all that he was not owner of the house. He took anything he pleased for
his own use, even father's most sacred possessions, and broke them in a
fit of anger, too, sometimes, without ever saying he was sorry. He
talked very disrespectfully of father and to him, and acted so to the
servants that they gave notice and left. Every few days there would be a
terrible time over something Herbert had done. Once I remember he went
to the safe and got some money out that belonged to father and went off
and spent it in some dreadful way that made father very angry. Of course
I was still only a little girl, and I did not know all that went on.
Father was very careful that I should not know. He guarded me more than
ever, but he always looked sad when he came to kiss me good-night.

"Herbert took especial delight in tormenting me," she went on with a sad
far-away look in her eyes as if she were recalling unpleasant memories.
She did not see the set look on Reyburn's face nor notice his low
exclamation of anger. She went steadily on: "He found out that I did not
like June-bugs, and once he caught hundreds of them and locked me into a
room with them with all the lights turned on. I was almost frightened to
death, but it cured me of being afraid of June-bugs." A little smile
trembled out on Betty's lips. "Just because I wouldn't give him the
satisfaction of letting him hear me scream." She finished. "Then he
caught a snake and put it in my room, and he put a lot of burdocks in my
hat so they would get in my hair. Foolish things those were, of course,
but he was a constant nightmare to me. Sometimes he would tie a wire
across the passages in the upper hall where I had to pass to my room,
and when I fell my hands went down against a lot of slimy toads in the
dark, for he always somehow managed to have the light go out just as I
fell. There were hundreds of things like that, but I needn't multiply
them. That's the kind of boy he was. And because he discovered that my
father loved me very much, and because he knew my father disliked him,
he spent much time in trying to torment me in secret. I couldn't tell my
father, because he always looked so sad whenever there was trouble, and
there was sure to be trouble between him and my stepmother if my father
found out that Herbert had done anything wrong. One day my father came
upon us just as Herbert had caught me and was trying to cut my curls
off. I didn't care about the curls, but I knew my father did. I began to
scream. Herbert gripped me so I thought I would die with the pain,
putting his big strong fingers around my throat and choking me so I
could not make any noise."

Reyburn clenched his hands until the knuckles went white and uttered an
exclamation, but Betty did not notice:

"There was a terrible time then, and I was sent away to a school, a good
many miles from home, where I stayed for several years. Father always
came up to see me every week end, for a few hours at least, and we had
wonderful times together. Sometimes in vacation he would bring my
stepmother along and she would bring me beautiful presents and smile and
pet me, and say she missed me so much and she wished I would ask my
father to let me come back and go to school in the city. But I never
did, because I was afraid of Herbert. As I grew older I used to have an
awful horror of him. But finally one vacation father and mother both
came up and said they wanted me at home. My stepmother went to my room
with me and told me I needn't be afraid of Herbert any more, that he was
quite grown up and changed and would be good to me, and that it would
please my father to have all his family together happily again. I
believed her and I told father I would like to go. He looked very happy,
and so I went home. Herbert had been away at school himself most of the
time, and so had Bessemer, although they had been in trouble a good many
times, so the servants told me, and had to change to new schools. They
were both away when I got home. I had a very happy time for three weeks,
only that I never saw father alone once. My stepmother was always there.
But she was kind and I tried not to mind. Then all of a sudden one night
I woke up and heard voices, and I knew that the boys were back from the
camp to which they had been sent. I didn't sleep much the rest of the
night, but in the morning I made up my mind that it was only a little
while before I could go back to school, and I would be nice to the boys
and maybe they wouldn't trouble me.

"I found that it was quite true that Herbert had grown up and changed.
He didn't want to torment me any more, he wanted to make love to me,
and I was only a child yet. I wasn't quite fifteen. It filled me with
horror, and after he had caught me in the dark--he always loved to get
people in the dark--and tried to kiss me, I asked father to let me go
back to school at once. I can remember how sad he looked at me as if I
had cut him to the heart when I asked him."

During this part of the tale Reyburn sat with stern countenance, his
fingers clenched around the arms of the chair in which he sat, but he
held himself quiet and listened with compressed lips, watching every
expression that flitted across the sweet pale face.

"That was the last time I was at home with my father," she said, trying
to control her quivering lips. "He took me back to school, and he came
three times to see me, though not so often as before. The last time he
said beautiful things to me about trying to live a right life and being
kind to those about me, and he asked me to forgive him if he had ever
done anything to hurt me in any way. Of course I said he hadn't. And
then he said he hoped I wouldn't feel too hard at him for marrying again
and bringing those boys into my life. I told him it was all right, that
some day they would grow up and go away and he and I would live together
again! And he said some awful words about them under his breath. But he
asked me to forgive him again and kissed me and went away.

"He was taken very sick when he got home, and they never let me know
until he was dead. Of course I went home to the funeral, but I didn't
stay; I couldn't. I went back to school alone. My stepmother had been
very kind, but she said she knew it was my father's wish that I should
finish my school year. When vacation came she was traveling for her
health. She wrote me a beautiful letter telling me how she missed me,
and how much she needed me now in her bereavement, and how she hoped
another summer would see us together; but she stayed abroad two years
and the third year she went to California. I was sent to another school,
and because I was not asked about it and there didn't seem anything else
to do, I went. Every time I would suggest doing something else my
stepmother would write and say how sorry she was she could not give her
consent, but my father had left very explicit directions about me and
she was only trying to carry out his wishes. She knew me well enough to
be sure I would want to do anything he wished for me. And I did, of
course."

Reyburn gave her a look of sympathy and getting up began to pace the
little room.

CHAPTER XIV

"IT was not until last spring that she sent for me to come home," went
on Betty, "and was very effusive about how much she needed me and how
she was so much better, and meant to be a real mother to me now, helping
me see the world and have a good time. She took me from one summer
resort to another. Of course it was pleasant after having been shut up
in school all those years, but she kept me close with her all the time,
and I met only the people she chose to have me meet. All the time she
kept talking about 'dear Herbert' and telling how wonderful he was and
how he had grown to be 'such a dear boy.' Finally he arrived and began
the very first evening he was with us to coax me to marry him. At first
he was very courteous and waited upon me whenever I stirred, and I
almost thought his mother was right about his being changed. But when I
told him that I did not love him and could not ever marry him I caught a
look on his face like an angry snarl, and I heard him tell his mother I
was a crazy little fool, and that he would break my neck for me after he
got me good and married. Then his mother began to come to me and cry
and tell me how dear Herbert was almost heart-broken, that he would
never lift up his head again, and that I would send him to ruin. It was
simply awful, and I didn't know how to endure it. I began to wonder
where I could go. Of course I had never been brought up to do anything,
so I could not very well expect to go out into the world and make my
living."

"Didn't you have any money at all?" interrupted Reyburn suddenly.

"Oh, yes," she said, looking up as if she had just remembered his
presence. "I had always plenty of spending money, but if I went away
where they couldn't find me, why, of course, I would have to give that
up."

"Why, where did your money come from? Was it an allowance from your
stepmother, or did your father leave it to you, or what?"

"I'm not just sure," said Betty, with troubled brow. "I never really
knew much about the money affairs. When I asked, they always put me off
and said that I was too young to be bothered with business yet, I would
be told all about it when I came of age. My stepmother harped a great
deal on keeping me young as long as possible. She said it was my
father's wish that I should be relieved of all care until I came of
age. But there were some trustees in Boston. I know that, because I had
to write to them, about once or twice a year. My stepmother was most
particular about that. I think they were old friends of my own mother,
though I don't know when I learned that. Father told me once that mother
had left me enough to keep me comfortably even without what he would
leave me, so I'm sure I shall have enough to repay you if I could once
get it."

"Don't worry about me!" he exclaimed. "It seems so terrible for you to
have been alone in a situation like that! Wasn't there any one you could
appeal to for help?"

"No, not any one whom I thought it would be right to tell. You see, in a
way it was my father's honor. She was his wife, and I'm sure he loved
her--at least at first--and she really was very good to me, except when
it was a question of her son."

"I'm afraid I can't agree with you there!" he said sternly. "I think she
was a clever actress. But excuse me. Go on, please."

"At last, when things had got so bad that I thought I must run away
somewhere, my stepmother came into my room one morning and locked the
door. She had been weeping, and she looked very sweet and pitiful. She
said she had something to tell me. She had tried not to have to do it,
for she was afraid it would grieve me and might make me have hard
feelings against my father. I told her that was impossible. Then she
told me that my father on his deathbed had called her to him and told
her that it was his wish that I should marry one of her sons, and he
wanted her to tell me. He felt that he had wronged them by hating them
for my sake and he felt that I could make it all right by marrying one
of them. My stepmother said that when she saw how infatuated dear
Herbert was with me she hoped that she would be spared having to tell
me, but now that I was treating him so she felt bound to deliver the
message. Then she handed me a paper which said virtually the same thing
which she had told me, and was signed by my father in his own
handwriting."

"Was the paper written or printed?" interrupted Reyburn.

"I think it was typewritten, but the signature was papa's. There could
be no mistake about that, and he wouldn't have signed something he
didn't mean." Betty sighed as if it were a subject she had worn into her
heart by much sorrowful thought.

"It might be quite possible for him to have done that under influence
or delirium, or when he was too sick to realize."

"Oh, do you think so?" Betty caught at the hope. "It seems so awful to
go against papa's last request."

"There is nothing awful but the idea of your being tied to that--beast!"
said Reyburn with unexpected fervor. Betty looked at him gratefully and
went on:

"I was simply appalled. I couldn't think, and I made my stepmother go
away and leave me for a little while, but things got blacker and blacker
and I thought I was going crazy. I couldn't marry Herbert even to please
my father. The next day Bessemer arrived. He had been worrying his
mother a lot about money, and when he arrived I couldn't help hearing
what they said to him. They charged him with all sort of dreadful
things. They called him a disgrace, and threatened to let him be
arrested, and a great many more such things. Finally his mother ended up
by telling him she never had loved him and that if he made any more
trouble about money she would cut him off without a cent. I was sitting
upstairs in my room with my windows open, and all their talk floated
right up to me. It made me feel sick, and yet I felt sorry for Bessemer,
for lately whenever he had been around he had been kind to me, and
sometimes I had stayed near him to get rid of Herbert. We often talked
over our troubles together and sympathized with one another. He felt
sorry for me, but he was weak himself and couldn't see any way out for
either of us.

"They had pretty stormy times all that day. Late in the afternoon
Herbert and Bessemer went to their mother's room and were closeted with
her for two hours, after which Herbert went away in the car with his
suitcase and bags as if he were not coming back soon. I watched him from
my window, and in great relief went down to take a little walk, for I
had stayed closely in my room all day trying to plan what to do. One
thing that held me from running away was that it would be such a
disgrace to the family, and I knew my father would have felt it so
keenly. That was always the great trouble when the boys got into scrapes
at college, my father would groan and say he felt disgraced to be so
conspicuous before the world. So I hesitated to do what would have been
a sorrow to him had he been alive.

"Half an hour later I was sitting alone in the twilight on one of the
porches, and Bessemer came out and sat down beside me.

"He looked so sort of homely and lonesome that I put my hand on his arm
and told him I was awfully sorry for him, and suddenly he turned around
and said:

"'Say, Betty, why don't you marry _me_? Then they can't say a word to
either of us. Your father's wishes will be carried out and Herb'll have
to whistle.'

"At first I was horrified, but we talked a long time about it, and he
told me how lonely he had always been, and how nobody had ever loved
him, and he knew he wasn't attractive, and all that; and then he said
that if I married him we would go away and live by ourselves and he
would let me do just as I wanted to. He wouldn't bother me about
anything. If I didn't love him he would keep out of my sight, and things
like that, till I got very sorry for him, and began to think that
perhaps after all it was the best thing that would ever come for either
of us. So I said I would.

"It surprised me a little that my stepmother took it so calmly when we
told her. She cried a little, but did it very prettily, and kissed
Bessemer, and told him he was fortunate. Then she kissed me and said I
was a darling, and that she would be so happy if it only weren't for
poor dear Herbert.

"But after that they began to rush things for a grand wedding, and I let
them do it because I didn't see anything else in the world for me."

Betty raised her eyes and encountered the clear grave gaze of Reyburn
fixed on her, and the color flew into her cheeks:

"I know you think I'm dreadful," she said, shrinking. "I've thought so
myself a thousand times, but truly I didn't realize then what an awful
thing it would be to marry a man I didn't love. I only wanted to hurry
up and get it done before Herbert came home. They said he had been
called away by important business and might be at home any day. I gave
my consent to everything they wanted to do, and they fixed it all just
as they pleased. One thing that happened upset me terribly. When the
wedding invitations came home my stepmother carried them off to her
room. I was too sad to pay much attention anyway. But the next morning I
happened to be down in the kitchen looking over the papers that the maid
had taken down from the waste baskets to search for a missing letter and
there in the pile I found one of the invitations partly addressed and
flung aside, and the invitation was still in the envelope. I pulled it
out with a ghastly kind of curiosity to see how I looked on paper, and
there it read, Mrs. Charles Garland Stanhope invites you to be present
at the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth to _Mr. Herbert Hutton_!

"My heart just stood still. With the paper in my hand I rushed up to my
stepmother's room and demanded to know what that meant. She smiled and
said she was so sorry I had been annoyed that way, that that was a
mistake, the invitations had come wrongly engraved and she had had to
send them back and have them done over again. She was afraid I might be
superstitious about it, so she hadn't told me. She was very gentle and
sweet and tried to soothe me, and called me 'Betty,' the name my father
always had for me, and at last I went back to my room feeling quite
comfortable. She had said she always felt troubled for poor Bessemer,
that nobody could love him right, he was so homely, and now I was going
to make everything right by marrying him. She was going to try to forget
what I had done to poor dear Herbert, and just be happy about Bessemer.
She talked so nicely that I kissed her, a thing I hadn't done in years,
not since she was first married to father. But somehow the shock of
seeing Herbert's name on the invitation stayed with me, and I began to
feel gloomier about it all and to wonder if perhaps I had done right.
The last day I was terribly depressed and when I got to the church that
night it suddenly came to me that perhaps after all I was not going to
be free at all as I had hoped, but was just tying myself up to them all
for life. I was thinking that as I walked up the aisle, and my throat
had a big lump in it the way it always does when I am frightened, and
then I looked up hoping a glimpse of poor Bessemer's face would steady
me and he wasn't there at all! And right over me, waiting beside the
minister, to marry me stood _Herbert_! My knees just gave way under me,
and everything got black so I couldn't go on another step, nor even
stand up. I had to drop. I wasn't unconscious as you all thought--I
heard everything that went on, but I couldn't do anything about it.

"After they had carried me into the other room and given me things to
drink, and I could get my breath again I saw it all clearly. Herbert
hadn't given up at all. He meant to marry me anyway. He had had the
invitations printed with his name on purpose and they probably hadn't
been changed at all. Everybody in that great church out there was
_expecting_ me to marry Herbert Hutton, and I _was not going to do it_!
I didn't quite know how I was going to stop it, but I knew I had to! You
see I was brought up to think a great deal about what people would think
of me if I did anything out of the usual, and it seemed to me I had
disgraced myself forever by dropping down in the aisle. I knew Herbert
well enough to be sure he would carry that wedding through now if he had
to hold me up in his arms till the ceremony was over, and I was
desperate. I would have given everything I had in the world if the floor
had opened and swallowed me up then, but of course I knew wild thoughts
like that wouldn't get me anywhere, so I just shut my eyes and tried to
think of a way; and then I asked them all to go out a minute and let me
be quiet. The doctor who had come out of the church told them to go. I
shall always bless that man, whoever he was! Then when they were gone I
opened a door that had a key in it, and I locked it behind me and ran
away down some stairs and out a passage that led to the street. That
girl, Jane Carson, was passing and she put her own coat on me and took
me to her room and sent me here. Oh, it's been so good to get here! Do
you think they can take me away against my will?"

"Certainly not!" said the young man. "Not without some foul play, but I
don't intend to give them any chance for that. By the way, when do you
come of age?"

"In three weeks," said Betty, looking troubled. "Why, would I be safe
after I was of age?"

"You certainly would not be under their guardianship any longer," said
the young lawyer, "and they would have no right to control your actions,
unless of course you were incapacitated somehow and unfit to manage your
own affairs."

Betty looked troubled.

"I've thought sometimes, ever since I saw that paper in which they
hinted that I was temporarily insane, that they might try to shut me up
in an insane asylum. Herbert wouldn't stop at anything. Could he do
that?"

"They would have to get a doctor to swear that you were mentally
unsound," said Reyburn, looking troubled. "Does he really love you, do
you think or does he only want to get you in his power for some reason?"

"It is more like that," said Betty sorrowfully, "he couldn't really love
anybody but himself."

"Well, don't you worry. I'm going at the case at once, and I'll put
those people where they'll have to walk a chalk line before many hours
are over. The first thing I must do is to see those trustees of yours.
Can you give me the names and addresses?"

He got out his fountain pen, and Betty told him all he wanted to know,
that is, all she knew herself, and then suddenly it was train time and
he hurried away. On the steps he paused and said in a low tone:

"Are you perfectly comfortable with these people for a few days until I
can get you better accommodations where you will be safe?"

"Entirely," said Betty eagerly. "I wouldn't want to go elsewhere."

"But it must be very hard for one like you to be thrown constantly with
illiterate, uncultured people."

Betty smiled dreamily:

"I don't think they are exactly uncultured," she said slowly.
"They--well, you see, they make a friend of God, and somehow I think
that makes a difference. Don't you think it would?"

"I should think it would," said Warren Reyburn reverently with a light
in his eyes. "I think, perhaps, if you don't mind my saying it, that
you, too, have been making a friend of God."

"I've been trying to," said Betty softly, with a shy glow on her face
that he remembered all the way back to the city.

CHAPTER XV

CANDACE CAMERON paced her little gabled room restively, with face
growing redder and more excited at every step. For several weeks now she
had been virtually a prisoner--albeit a willing enough one--in the house
of Stanhope. But the time had come when she felt that she must do
something.

She had gone quietly enough about a proscribed part of the house, doing
little helpful things, making herself most useful to the madam, slipping
here and there with incredible catlike tread for so plump a body,
managing to overhear important conversations, and melting away like a
wraith before her presence was discovered. She had made herself so
unobtrusive as to be almost forgotten by all save the maid Marie, who
had been set to watch her; and she had learned that if she went to bed
quite early in the evening, Marie relaxed her watch and went down to the
servants' quarters, or even sometimes went out with a lover for a while,
that is, if the madam herself happened to be out also. On several such
occasions she had made valuable tours of investigation through the
madam's desk and private papers.

That she was overstepping her privileges as a servant in the house went
without saying, but she silenced her Scotch conscience, which until this
period of her existence had always kept her strictly from meddling with
other people's affairs, by declaring over and over again to herself that
she was doing perfectly right because she was doing it for the sake of
"that poor wee thing that was being cheated of her rights."

Several weeks had passed since her sudden re-establishment in the
family, and the reports of Betty, so hastily readjusted and refurbished
to harmonize with the newspaper reports, had not been any more
satisfying. Mrs. Stanhope had explained to the servants the day after
the excitement that Miss Betty had become temporarily deranged, and
later that she had escaped from the private hospital where she had been
taken, and they were doing all in their power to find her. In reply to
Candace's gimlet-like questions she had given the name of a hospital
where she said Betty had been taken at first, and everything seemed
altogether plausible. But as the days went by and the horror of her
absence grew into the soul of the lonely woman whose care Betty had been
for years, Candace became more and more restive and suspicious. It was
these suspicions which sent her on her investigations, and made her
uncannily wise to pry open secret locks and cover all trace of her
absence after she had gleaned what knowledge she sought.

On this particular evening her excitement was due to having come across
some correspondence bearing the signature of a man to whom a certain
letter had been addressed, which had been entrusted to her charge by
Betty's dying father and taken from her by his wife. For years she had
been worried about that, and yet she had no absolute reason to doubt
that the madam had not sent it to its destination, except as she knew
its contents and read Mrs. Stanhope's character beneath the excellent
camouflage. But to-night, even the briefest glance through the bundle of
letters showed plainly that those men in Boston never knew the master's
wishes, or at least, if they knew them, they were utterly disregarding
them.

Aroused on one point, her suspicions began to extend further. Where was
Betty? Did her stepmother know, and was she somewhere suffering, alone,
perhaps being neglected because she had not done as they wanted her to
do? If the stepmother was capable of destroying a letter, was she
perhaps not also capable of putting Betty out of the way? There were
points of detail which of course did not harmonize with any such theory
as this. Candace was no logician, but she was keen enough to feel that
something was wrong. As for that theory of Betty's insanity she scouted
it with a harsh laugh whenever it was mentioned in her hearing.
Betty--keen, sweet, trusting little Betty _insane_! Nonsense! It was
unthinkable. If she was in an asylum anywhere she was there without
warrant, and it behoved her faithful old nurse to find a way out for
her. This she meant to do against all odds, for she was thoroughly
aroused now.

She went to the window and looked down into the lighted street. Over
there not four blocks away rose the steeple of the church where Betty
had gone to be married! Around the corner was the great brick pile of
the hospital where her stepmother said she had been taken from the
church, and from which she was believed by the other servants to have
escaped.

Standing thus looking out into the light-starred city, Candace began to
form a plan, her plump tightly garmented chest rising and falling
excitedly as she thought it all out. It was up to her to find out what
had become of Betty. But how was she to get away without being
suspected? Somehow she must do it. She knew perfectly the address that
had been on that letter. She had written it down carefully from memory
as soon as it had been taken away from her. She must go to Boston and
find that man to whom it had been written, and discover whether he had
ever received it. But she could not go until she found out certainly
whether or not Betty had ever really escaped from the hospital. Who knew
but that she was shut up there yet, and the madam telling this tale all
about and advertising with a five thousand dollar reward! In the movies,
too! Such a disgrace on the family! How the master would have writhed at
the publicity of his beloved daughter--"poor wee thing!"

Candace turned from the window with her lips set, and tiptoeing to the
door, listened. Yes, it was Aileen who was coming lightly up the stairs,
singing in a low tone. It was Aileen's evening out. That meant that
Marie would be more than usually active on the upper floor. She must
manage it before Aileen left and Marie was called upstairs, or there
would be no opportunity to get away without Marie seeing her.

Hastily she gathered her silk dress, her cloak and her apoplectic hat
into a bundle with her purse and her gloves, and tied them into an old
apron, with the strings hanging free. Then stealthily opening the
window, she dropped them out into the kitchen area below, close to the
region of the ash cans. It was a risk, of course, but one must take some
chances, and the servants would all be in the kitchen just now, laughing
and talking. They would scarcely have heard it fall.

She listened a tense instant, then closed the window, and possessing
herself of a few little things, gathered hastily about the room, which
she could stuff in her pockets, she opened her door softly, closed it
behind her, and trotted off down the stairs just as if she were going
about her ordinary duty. Listening a minute outside the kitchen door she
slipped stealthily down the cellar stairs, and tiptoed over to the area
door where the ashman took out the ashes. Softly slipping the bolt she
opened the door and drew in her bundle. Then standing within, she
quickly slipped the black silk over her housemaid's gown, donned her
coat and hat and gloves, and sallied forth. A moment more and she was in
the next street with the consciousness that she "might have done the
like any time sooner, if she'd wanted, in spite of that little spy-cat
Marie."

"If I want to go back I'll just say I went after my insurance book," she
chuckled to herself as she sped down the street in the direction of the
hospital.

Arrived at the big building she asked to see the list of patients taken
in on the day of Betty's wedding, and succeeded in getting a pretty
accurate description of each one, sufficient at least to satisfy her
that Betty was not among them. Then she asked a few more bold questions,
and came away fully convinced that Betty had never been in that
hospital.

By this time it was nine o'clock, and she meant to take the evening
train for Boston, which left, she was sure, somewhere near midnight. She
took a trolley to her old lodgings where she had been since Mrs.
Stanhope had sent her away the first time, and hastily packed a small
hand bag with a few necessities, made a few changes in her garments,
then went to see a fellow lodger whom she knew well, and where she felt
sure she could easily get a check cashed, for she had a tidy little bank
account of her own, and was well known to be reliable.

Having procured the necessary funds, she made her way to the station and
found that she had still an hour to spare before the Boston train left.

Settled down at last in the back seat of a common car, she made herself
as comfortable as her surroundings would allow, and gave herself up to
planning the campaign that was before her.

Canny Candace did not go at once to the office of the brothers, James
and George McIntyre, though she looked them up in the telephone book the
very first thing when the train arrived in Boston even before she had
had a bite to eat, and her cup of tea which meant more to her than the
"bite." She reasoned that they would be busy in the early hours and not
be able to give her their undivided attention. She had not lived out all
her life for nothing. She knew the ways of the world, and she had very
strict ideas about the best ways of doing everything. So it happened
that when she was at last shown into the office of the McIntyres, Warren
Reyburn who had traveled to Boston on the sleeper of the same train that
she had taken the night before, was just arising from an earnest
conference with the two men. With her first glance, as the three emerged
from the inner office, Candace saw that the two elder gentlemen were
much disturbed and it flitted through her mind that she had come at an
inopportune moment. Then her quick eye took in the younger man and her
little alert head cocked to one side with a questioning attitude. Where
had she seen him before? Candace had the kind of a mind that kept people
and events card-indexed even to the minutest detail, and it didn't take
many seconds for her to place Warren Reyburn back in the church at the
wedding, standing against the wall with his arms folded. She had noticed
him particularly because he was so courteous to a little old lady who
came in too late to get a seat. She had studied him as he stood there,
waiting for the wedding march, and she had thought how handsome he
looked and how fine it would have been if her wee Betty had been getting
a man like that in place of the weak-faced Bessemer Hutton. She had
watched to see who he was with, and felt deep satisfaction when she
noticed him lean over and speak to Mrs. Bryce Cochrane as if he belonged
to her. He wasn't her husband, because she knew Mr. Cochrane, who had
been a favorite with Mr. Stanhope and much at the house. This man might
be Mrs. Cochrane's brother "or the likes," and she had pleased herself
watching him till Betty arrived and took all her thoughts. So now she
stood with her little round head in its hectic hat tilted interestedly
to one side, watching, ears on the keen to catch any word, for all the
world like a "bit brown sparrow" saucily perched on another man's
window, where it really had no right to be.

At last one of the McIntyre's shook hands gravely with the younger man,
and the other one attended him to the door, talking in low tones. The
McIntyre thus set at liberty, turned questioningly toward the stranger,
who was not slow in getting to her feet and coming forward.

"You will maybe be Mr. James McIntyre?" she asked, lifting her sea-blue
eyes set in her apple-red face, and fixing her firm little lips in
dignity. Candace was a servant and knew her place, but she felt the
importance of her mission, and meant to have no disrespect done to it.

"I am Mr. George McIntyre," the gentleman replied, and, indicating the
man at the door, "Mr. James McIntyre will be at liberty in a moment, but
perhaps I will do as well?"

Candace cocked a glance toward the elderly back at the door; and then
returned her look to Mr. George:

"You'll maybe be knowing Mr. Charles Stanhope?" she propounded, as if
she were giving him a riddle, and her blue eyes looked him through and
through:

"Oh, surely, surely! He was a very close friend! You--knew him?"

"I was Miss Betty's nurse who cooked the griddle cakes for you the
morning after the funeral----" she said, and waited with breathless
dignity to see how he would take it.

"Oh! Is that so!" He beamed on her kindly. "Yes, yes, I remember those
cakes. They were delicious! And what can I do for you? Just sit down.
Why, bless me, I don't know but that your coming may be very opportune!
Can you tell me anything of Miss Betty?"

Candace pressed her lips together with a knowing smile as much as to say
she might tell volumes if it were wise, and she cast a glance at the
other brother who was shaking hands now with his visitor and promising
to meet him a little later:

"Yon man'll be knowing a bit, too, I'll be thinking," she hazarded
nodding toward Reyburn as he left. "He was at the wedding, I'm most
sure----!"

The elder McIntyre gave her a quick glance and signalled to his brother
to come near:

"This is Miss Stanhope's nurse, the one who cooked breakfast for us at
the time of the funeral," he said, and to Candace, "This is Mr. James
McIntyre."

Candace fixed him with another of her inquisitive little glances:

"I've some bit papers put by that I thought ye might like to see," she
said with a cautious air. "I've kept them fer long because I thought
they might be wanted sometime, yet I've never dared bring them to your
notice before lest I would be considered meddlin', and indeed I wasn't
sure but you had them already. Will you please to look over them papers
and see if you've ever seen them before?" She drew forth an envelope
from her bag and handed it to them. "It's a bit letter that Mr. Stanhope
wrote the day he was dyin' an' then copied and give to me to mail, and
his lady took it away, sayin' she would attend to it. What I want to
know is, did ye ever get the letter? If ye did it's all right and none
of my business further, an' I'll go on my way back home again and think
no more about it; but if ye didn't then there it is, an' you ought to
see it, that's sure!"

The two men drew eagerly together and studied the trembling lines:

"It's his writing all right," murmured one, under his breath, and the
brother nodded gravely:

"You say that this was the original of a letter that was given to you to
mail to us?"

Candace nodded.

"It's what he wrote first, and got ink on it, an' then wrote it over. I
can't say what changes he made, as I didn't read it, but this he gave to
me to burn, and before I gets it burned my lady comes in and takes the
letter from me while he was sleepin'; and so I hid the bit papers,
thinkin' they might be a help to wee Betty sometime. And oh, can ye
tell me anything of my little Lady Betty? Is she safe? Did she come to
you for refuge? You needn't be afraid to tell me. I'll never breathe a
word----!"

The two brothers exchanged quick glances of warning and the elder man
spoke:

"My good woman, we appreciate your coming, and these papers may prove
very useful to us. We hope to be able to clear up this matter of Miss
Stanhope's disappearance very soon. She did not come to us, however, and
she is not here. But if you will step into the room just beyond and wait
for a little while we may be able to talk this matter over with you."

Very courteously he ushered the plump, apprehensive little woman into
the next room and established her in an easy leather chair with a
quantity of magazines and newspapers about her, but she kept her little
head cocked anxiously on one side, and watched the door like a dog whose
master has gone in and shut the way behind him; and she never sat back
in her chair nor relaxed one iota during the whole of the two hours that
she had to wait before she was called at last to the inner office where
she found the handsome young man whom she remembered seeing at the
wedding.

She presently found that Reyburn was as keen as he was handsome, but if
she hadn't remembered him at the wedding as a friend of that nice Mrs.
Cochrane, she never would have made it as easy as she did for him to
find out things from her, for she could be canny herself on occasion if
she tried, and she did not trust everybody.

CHAPTER XVI

THE mysterious disappearance of Candace from the Stanhope house caused
nothing short of a panic. Herbert and his mother held hourly wrangles,
and frantically tried one thing and then another. Day after day the
responses came in from the advertisements they had caused to be put
forth. Everyone was hot-foot for the reward, but so far little of
encouragement had been brought out. More and more the young man was
fixing his mind on the idea that Candace had something to do with
Betty's disappearance, so he was leaving no stone unturned to find the
nurse as well as the girl. To this end he insisted on seeing personally
and cross-examining every person who came claiming to have a clue to the
lost girl.

That morning, at about the same hour when Candace walked into the office
of the McIntyre Brothers in Boston, James, the butler, much against his
dignity, was ushering a curious person into the presence of the son of
the house. James showed by every line of his noble figure that he
considered this duty beneath his dignity, and that it was only because
the occasion was unusual that he tolerated it for a moment, but the man
who ambled observantly behind him, stretching his neck to see everything
that was to be seen in this part of the great house, that he might tell
about it at the fire-house, failed to get the effect. He was wondering
why in thunder such rich people as these seemed to be, couldn't afford
carpets big enough to cover their whole floors, instead of just having
skimpy little bits of pieces dropped around here and there, that made
you liable to skid all over the place if you stepped on one of them
biasly.

Herbert Hutton lifted his head and watched Abijah Gage slouch into the
room. He measured him keenly and remained silent while Abijah opened up.
There had been many other applicants for that reward that day, with
stories cunningly woven, and facts, substantiated by witnesses, in one
case a whole family brought along to swear to the fabrication; but as
yet Herbert had not found a promising clue to his missing bride, and the
time was going by. In a few days it would be too late, and his
undisciplined spirit raged within him. It was not only his bride he
wanted, it was her fortune, which was worth any trouble he might take;
and every day, every hour, every minute now, it was slipping, slipping,
slipping from his eager grasp.

Abijah was a little overawed in the presence of this insolent man of the
world, but he felt he had, for almost the first time in his life, Truth
on his side, and he was strong in the power of it. With a cunning equal
to the one that matched him he dealt out his information bit by bit,
giving only enough at a time to make his victim sure it was the real
thing this time; and then he halted stubbornly and would say no more
until that five thousand dollars was signed and sealed over to him. They
had a long argument, but in the end Bi won, and was given certain
documents which he was satisfied would stand in court. A little later
the telephone in Reyburn's office rang sharply, and when Jimmie Ryan
responded a voice that he had never heard before asked for Mr. Warren
Reyburn.

"He's out of town," Jimmie replied.

"How soon will he be back?" The voice was like a snarl.

"I'm not quite sure. He's called to Boston on business," swelled Jimmie
loyally.

An oath ripped over the wire, and Jimmie raged within and quailed. Was
his idol then losing a great case?

"He might be back in a few hours," insinuated Jimmie. "Who shall I say
called up if he should have me over long distance?"

"You needn't say anybody! I'll call up again," growled the voice, and
the man hung up.

Jimmie sat for a long time in blissful reverie. "He's getting there!" he
whispered to himself. "He'll get the big cases yet, and I can keep my
first place. I must see Jane to-night and tell her."

Meanwhile, back at Tinsdale improvements had been going on at the
Carsons'. Bob, always handy with tools, had been putting in a tank over
the bathtub. They had one at the house on the hill, only it was run by a
windmill. Bob had a friend who was a plumber's son, and from him had
obtained some lengths of second-hand water-pipe and an old faucet. He
had conceived the idea of a tank on the roof, and his first plan had
been only a rainwater tank, but gradually as his vision widened he
included a force pump in the outfit of desires. He hung around the
plumber's until they unearthed an old force pump somewhat out of repair,
and for a few days' assisting the plumber Bob acquired it, together with
after-hour help to put it into operation. The next object was a tank,
which seemed at first to represent the impossible; but the grocer at
last offered a suggestion in the shape of several large empty hogsheads
which he readily accepted at the price of four Saturdays' work in the
store.

All Bob's extra time was put into these improvements, and he was as
excited every night when it grew dark and he was forced to come to
supper because he couldn't see any longer to work, as if he had been
building an airship.

The day the hogsheads were marshaled and connected and the force pump
sent its first stream into them was a great occasion. The family
assembled in the yard, with Elise Hathaway, who had been allowed to come
over for a few minutes with Betty. Bob and his plumber friend pumped,
and Emily climbed to the attic window, which overlooked the row of
hogsheads, ranged so that the water would flow from one to the other,
and acted as pilot to the new enterprise. As the first stream from the
force pump, which Bob had lavishly painted red, crept its way up the
pipes and began to wet the bottom of the first and highest hogshead
Emily gave a little squeal of delight and shouted "It's come! It's come!
The water's come!" and the family below fairly held their breath with
the wonder of it. Not that such a thing could be, but that their own
freckled, grinning Bob should have been able to achieve it.

There was an elaborate system of tin conductors which conveyed the waste
water from the bathtub out through a hole in the wall of the little
laundry bathroom, and distributed it along the garden beds wherever its
controller desired to irrigate. Thus the system became practical as well
as a luxury. There was also an arrangement of gutter pipes for carrying
off any surplus water from the hogsheads, so saving the Carson house
from possible inundation at any time of heavy storms.

After the plumbing was finished Bob painted the laundry neatly inside
with beautiful white paint and robin's-egg blue for the ceiling, and
Betty told him it almost made one think of going swimming in the ocean.
Next he began to talk about a shower bath. Betty told him what one was
like and he began to spend more days down at the plumber's asking
questions and picking up odd bits of pipe, making measurements, and
doing queer things to an old colander for experiment's sake. The day
that Warren Reyburn came for the first time Bob had the shower part
finished and ready to erect, and the next day saw it complete with a rod
for the rubber curtain that Betty had promised to make for him. He and
she were planning how they would make further improvements on the house
before Jane and Nellie should come home for their summer vacation week.
Betty had thoroughly entered into the life of the little household now,
and was a part of it. She saved her own small wages, and grudged all
she had to spend for necessary clothes, that she might contribute
further to the comfort and beauty of the general home.

After Warren Reyburn's visit the last barrier between Betty and Ma
seemed to be broken down. As soon as she had closed the door she flew
into the other room and flung her arms around Ma's neck, bursting into
soft weeping on her motherly shoulder. Ma had done a rapid turning act
when she heard her coming, for in truth she had been peeping behind the
green window-shade to watch the handsome stranger go down the street,
but she would have dropped the iron on her foot and pretended to be
picking it up rather than let Betty suspect her interest in the visitor.

"Oh, mother," she murmured in Mrs. Carson's willing ear, "I have been so
frightened----"

"I know, dearie!" soothed the mother, quite as if she had been her own.
"I know!"

"But he was very kind," she said lifting her head with an April effect
of tears. "He's going to try to fix things for me so that I don't need
ever to be afraid of any one making trouble for me any more. You see, I
sort of ran away. There was somebody I was afraid of who troubled me a
great deal."

"Yes, dearie, I thought as much," said Ma. "Jane kind of gave me to
understand there was something like that. I'm real glad there's
somebody goin' to look into your affairs an' fix things right for you. I
knew you was restless an' worried. Now it'll get all straightened out.
He's got a nice face. I trusted him first off. He's a church member, an'
that's somethin'. They ain't all spiritual, but they're mostly clean an'
just an' kindly, when they're anythin' at all but just plain hypocrites,
which, thank the Lord, there ain't so many as some would have us
believe. Now wash your face, dearie, an' run back to your place so you
can come home early, for we're goin' to have the old hen with dumplin's
for supper to celebrate."

That was one charming thing about that household: they celebrated every
blessed little trifle that came into their lives, so that living with
them was like a procession of beautiful thanksgivings.

It was while Betty was eating the gala "hen," delicious in its festive
gravy and dumplings, that she looked off across the little dining-room
to the dark window with its twinkling village lights in the distance and
thought of the stranger. A dark fear flashed across her sweet face and
sparkled in the depths of her eyes for just an instant. Was it perhaps
the distant bay of the hounds on her trail, coming nearer every moment?
Then she remembered the heavenly Father and her new-found faith, and
turned back to the cheery little room and the children's pleasant
clatter, resolved to forget the fear and to trust all to Him who cared
for her. Perhaps he had sent the pleasant stranger, and the thought
brought a quiet little smile to settle about her lips. She laughed with
Bob and Emily at how they had got wet with a sudden unexpected shower
from the new bath while they were arranging the curtain on the rod, and
Emily had turned the faucet on without knowing it. The patient-eyed
mother watched them all and was satisfied.

How good it is that we cannot hear all the noises of the earth at the
same time, nor know of every danger that lurks near as we are passing
by! We grumble a great deal that God does not send us as much as we
think he might, but we give scarce a thought to our escape from the many
perils, lying close as our very breath, of which we never even dream.

At that moment, as they sat quietly eating their happy meal, a deadly
particular peril was headed straight for Tinsdale.

Abijah Gage and Herbert Hutton boarded the evening train for Tinsdale
together and entered the sleeper. Abijah shuffled behind, carrying the
bags, a most extraordinary and humiliating position for him. He had
never been known to carry anything, not even himself if he could help
it, since the day his mother died and ceased to force him to carry in
wood and water for her at the end of a hickory switch. He glanced
uneasily round with a slight cackle of dismay as he arrived in the
unaccustomed plush surroundings and tried to find some place to dump his
load. But the well-groomed Herbert strode down the long aisle unnoticing
and took possession of the section he had secured as if he owned the
road.

"You can sit there!" he ordered Bi with a condescending motion, dropping
into his own seat and opening a newspaper.

Bi sat down on the edge of the seat, and held on to the arm in a
gingerly way as if he were afraid to trust himself to anything so
different. He looked furtively up and down the car, eyed the porter, who
ignored him contemptuously and finally came back and demanded his
sleeper ticket with a lordliness that Bi did not feel he could take from
a negro. But somehow the ticket got tangled in his pocket, and Bi had a
hard time finding it, which deepened his indignation at the porter.

"I ain't takin' no sass from no one. My seat's paid fer all right," he
said distinctly for the enlightenment of the other passengers, and
Herbert Hutton reached out a discreet arm and dropped something in the
porter's hand which sent him on his way and left Bi snorting audibly
after him.

"You'd better shut up!" growled the dictator to Bi. "We don't want to be
conspicuous, you know. If you can't hold your tongue and act as if you
had ever traveled before, I'll get off this train at the next station
and you can whistle for your reward. Do you understand?"

Bi dropped his toothless lower jaw a trifle and his little eyes grew
narrow. This was no way to manage affable Bi. He loved a good visit, and
he had counted on one all the way to Tinsdale. He had no idea of sitting
silent.

"I understand," he drawled, "an' I'll be gormed ef I'll agree. I ain't
told you yet where we get off, an' I don't have to ef I don't wantta. Ef
you can't treat me like a gen'l'man you know where you can get off, an'
I ain't havin' to state it."

Herbert Hutton drew his arrogant brows in a frown of annoyance, and
whirled around to placate his guide:

"Now see here, you old popinjay, what's got into you?"

"No, sir, I ain't nobody's papa," babbled Bi, seeing he had scored a
point. "I have enough to do to support myself without any family."

"That's all right, have it your own way, only shut up or we'll have
somebody listening. Have a cigar. Take two. But you can't smoke 'em in
here, you'll have to go to the smoking-room. Wait! I'll see if we can
get the drawing-room."

The porter appeared and the change was effected, to the great
disappointment of Bi, who kept continually poking his head out to get a