before this subject was broached. And
it was the real reason for Helen's coming East to visit the Starkweathers.
"Dud" was "in the way of being a lawyer," as he had previously told her,
and Helen had come to realize that it was a lawyer's advice she needed
more than anything else.

"Now, Jess, will you keep still long enough for me to listen to the story
of my very first client?" demanded Dud, sternly, of his sister.

"Oh, I'll stuff the napkin into my mouth! You can gag me! Your very first
client, Dud! And it's so interesting."

"It is customary for clients to pay over a retainer; isn't it?" queried
Helen, her eyes dancing. "How much shall it be, Mr. Lawyer?" and she
opened her purse.

There was the glint of a gold piece at the bottom of the bag. Dud flushed
and reached out his hand for it.

"That five dollars, Miss Helen. Thank you. I shall never spend this coin,"
declared Dud, earnestly. "And I shall take it to a jeweler's and have it
properly engraved."

"What will you have put on it?" asked Helen, laughing.

He looked at her from under level brows, smiling yet quite serious.

"I shall have engraved on it 'Snuggy, to Dud'--if I may?" he said.

But Helen shook her head and although she still smiled, she said:

"You'd better wait a bit, Mr. Lawyer, and see if your advice brings about
any happy conclusion of my trouble. But you can keep the gold piece, just
the same, to remember me by."

"As though I needed _that_ reminder!" he cried.

Jess removed the corner of the napkin from between her pretty teeth. "Get
busy, do!" she cried. "I'm dying to hear about this strange affair you say
you have come East to straighten out, Helen."

So the girl from Sunset Ranch told all her story. Everything her father
had said to her upon the topic before his death, and all she suspected
about Fenwick Grimes and Allen Chesterton--even to the attitude Uncle
Starkweather took in the matter--she placed before Dud Stone.

He gave it grave attention. Helen was not afraid to talk plainly to him,
and she held nothing back. But at the best, her story was somewhat
disconnected and incomplete. She possessed very few details of the crime
which had been committed. Mr. Morrell himself had been very hazy in his
statements regarding the affair.

"What we want first," declared Dud, impressively, "is to get the _facts_.
Of course, at the time, the trouble must have made some stir. It got into
the newspapers."

"Oh, dear, yes," said Hele