ieved was all wrong. How could he do it, how could he do
it! We bore to think he was dead; yes, we bore that, and we didn't
complain; but this is more than any one can ask us to bear. Oh, Suzette,
what can we say, now? What can we say, after he's confessed himself that
he took the money, and that he has got part of it yet? But I know he
didn't! I know he hasn't! He's crazy! Oh, poor, poor father! Don't you
think he must be crazy? And where is he? Why don't he write to us, and
tell us what he wants us to do? Does he think we would tell any one
where he was? That _shows_ he's out of his mind. I always thought that
if he could come back to life somehow, he'd prove that they had lied
about him; and now! Oh, it isn't as if it were merely the company that
was concerned, or what people said; but it's as if our own father, that
we trusted so much, had broken his word to _us_. That is what kills me."

The day passed. They sent Mrs. Newton away when she came to help them at
dinner. They locked their doors, and shut themselves in from the world,
as mourners do with death. Adeline's monologue went on, with the brief
responses which she extorted from Suzette, and at last it ceased, as if
her heart had worn itself out in the futile repetition of its griefs.

Then Suzette broke her silence with words that seemed to break from it
of themselves in their abrupt irrelevance to what Adeline had last said.
"We must give it up!"

"Give what up?" Adeline groaned back.

"The house--and the farm--and this hovel. Everything! It isn't ours."

"Not ours?"

"No. That letter makes it theirs--the people's whose money he took. We
must send for Mr. Putney and tell him to give it to them. He will know
how."

Adeline looked at her sister's face in dismay. She gasped out, "Why, but
Mr. Putney says it's ours, and nobody can touch it!"

"That was _before_. Now it is theirs; and if we kept it from them we
should be stealing it. How do we know that father had any right to give
it to us when he did?"

"Suzette!"

"I keep thinking such things, and I had better say them unless I want to
go out of my senses. Once I would have died before I gave it up, because
he left it to us, and now it seems as if I couldn't live till I gave it
up, because he left it to us. No, I can never forgive him, if he is my
father. I can never speak to him again, or see him; never! He is dead to
me, _now_!"

The words seemed to appeal to the contrary-mindedness that lurks in