in," he said, lighting his pipe again and
settling himself in his chair. "But my story is a simple one, dear
friends, and not nearly so wonderful as you may imagine. My father had
a big family that kept him poor, and I was a tinsmith with little work
to be had in the village where we lived. So I started west, working my
way from town to town, until I got to Portland, Oregon.

"There was work in plenty there, making the tin cans in which salmon
and other fish is packed, and as I was industrious I soon had a shop
of my own, and supplied cans to the packers. The shop grew to be
a great factory, employing hundreds of men. Then I bought up the
factories of my competitors, so as to control the market, and as I
used so much tin-plate I became interested in the manufacture of this
product, and invested a good deal of money in the production and
perfection of American tin. My factories were now scattered all along
the coast, even to California, where I made the cans for the great
quantities of canned fruits they ship from that section every year.
Of course the business made me rich, and I bought real estate with my
extra money, and doubled my fortune again and again.

"I never married, for all my heart was in the business, and I thought
of nothing else. But a while ago a big consolidation of the canning
industries was effected, and the active management I resigned to other
hands, because I had grown old, and had too much money already.

"It was then that I remembered the family, and went back quietly to
the village where I was born. They were all dead or scattered,
I found; but because Jane had inherited a fortune in some way I
discovered where she lived and went to see her. I suppose it was
because my clothes were old and shabby that Jane concluded I was a
poor man and needed assistance; and I didn't take the trouble to
undeceive her.

"I also found my three nieces at Elmhurst, and it struck me it would
be a good time to study their characters; for like Jane I had a
fortune to leave behind me, and I was curious to find out which girl
was the most deserving. No one suspected my disguise. I don't usually
wear such poor clothes, you know; but I have grown to be careless of
dress in the west, and finding that I was supposed to be a poor man I
clung to that old suit like grim death to a grasshopper."

"It was very wicked of you," said Patsy, soberly, from her father's
lap.

"As it turned out," continued the little man, "Jane'