of powder, and half-a-box of Windfall's Teaberry Tonic
Pills, each one of them as big and as hard as a buckshot. They were
brought here by a travelling agent, who sold some of them to my people;
and I tell you, sir, that those pills made them so sick that one man
wasn't able to work for two days, and another for three. I vowed if that
agent ever came back, I'd shoot his abominable pills into him, and I've
kept the gun loaded for the purpose. Was this a pill man? I scarcely
think he was a fertilizer, because it is rather late in the season for
those bandits."

"He is a man," said Lawrence, coming up the steps, "who belongs to a
class much worse than those you have mentioned. He is what is called a
blackmailer."

"Is that so?" cried the old lady, her eyes flashing as she brought the
butt of the gun heavily upon the porch floor. "I'm very glad I did not
know it; very glad, indeed; for I might have been tempted to give him
what belonged to another, without waiting for him to disobey my order to
go. I am very much troubled, sir, that this annoyance should have
happened to you in my house. Pray do not allow it to interfere with the
enjoyment of your visit here, which I hope may continue as long as you
can make it convenient." The words and manner convinced Lawrence that
that they did not merely indicate a conventional hospitality. The old
lady meant what she said. She wanted him to stay.

That morning he had become convinced that he had been invited there
because Mrs Keswick wished him to marry Miss March; and she had done
this, not out of any kind feeling toward him, because that would be
impossible, considering the shortness of their acquaintance, but because
she was opposed to her nephew's marriage with Miss March, and because
he, Lawrence, was the only available person who could be brought forward
to supplant him. "But whatever her motive is," thought Lawrence, "her
invitation comes in admirably for me, and I hope I shall get the proper
advantage from it."

Shortly after this, Lawrence sat in the parlor, by himself, writing a
letter. It was to Junius Keswick; and in it he related the facts of his
search for him in New York, and the reason why he desired to make his
acquaintance. He concealed nothing but the fact that Keswick's cousin
had had anything to do with the affair. "If she wants him to know that,"
he thought, "she can tell him herself. It is not my business to make any
revelations in that quarter." He conclude