warmed toward this sweet-spirited, childless woman.

"Jim wants her, else I could not have come," he said gently, "but you can
come to Grass River to see her sometimes."

"Oh, no, it is so far," Jane Aydelot said, and Carey realized in how small
an orbit her life revolved.

"But she does good in it. What does distance count, against that?" he
thought to himself. Aloud he said:

"Tell me of Tank, Miss Aydelot."

"He has run his course here, but he is shrewd enough to escape the law.
His parents mortgaged the Shirley House to get money to keep his doings
quiet. My Uncle Francis foreclosed on them at last. But by Jim's abrupt
leaving, Cloverdale blamed him for a long time for the family misfortunes.
Tank broke every moral law; he invested his money wildly in his greed to
make more money, until finally the bank failure came. That is a long
story, and it was a dead loss. But the cashier's suicide stopped
investigation. All blame was laid on him. And he, being dead, made no
complaint and incriminated nobody."

"Where is Tank now?" Carey asked.

He did not know why the image of Thomas Smith of Wilmington, Delaware,
should come unbidden to his mind just now, nor why he should feel that the
answer to his question held only a portion of what could have been told
him then.

"Nobody knows exactly where," Jane Aydelot replied. "He left his wife
penniless. She lived here with me and died here. Tank hasn't been seen in
Cloverdale for a long time. It is strange how family ties get warped
sometimes. And oftenest over property."

Doctor Carey thought of Asher, and was silent. But Jane Aydelot divined
his thought.

"I am thinking of our own family," she said, looking into the heart of the
wood fire. "I have my cousin Asher's heritage, which by law now neither he
nor any child of his can receive from me."

"Miss Aydelot, he doesn't want it. And there is no prejudice in him
against you at all. Moreover, if his dreams come true, little Thaine
Aydelot will never need it." There was a sternness in Carey's voice that
pained his hostess.

"But, Doctor Carey!" she began hesitatingly. Then, as if to change the
trend of thought, she added simply, "I try to use it well."

Horace Carey was by nature and experience a keen reader of human
minds. As Jane Aydelot studied the burning coals in the grate, he
studied her face, and what he read there gave him both pleasure and
pain. Between him and that face came the image of Virginia Aydelo