AMPERS sat in his little office absorbed in business. The May
morning was ideal. Through the front door the sounds of the street drifted
in. Through the rear door the roomy backyard, which was Champers' one
domestic pleasure, sent in an odor of white lilac. By all the rules
Champers should have preferred hollyhocks and red peonies, if he had cared
for flowers at all. It was for the memory of the old mother, whom he would
not turn adrift to please a frivolous wife, that he grew the white
blossoms she had loved. But as he never spoke of her, nor seemed to see
any other flowers, nobody noticed the peculiarity.

"I wonder how I missed that mail?" he mused, as he turned a foreign
envelope in his hands. "I reckon the sight of that poor devil, Smith,
dropping into town so suddenly five days ago upset me so I forgot my mail
and went to see the Shirleys. And the hot afternoon and Smith's coming in
here, and--"Darley leaned back in his chair and sighed.

"Poor Jacobs! Why should he be taken? Smith was gunning for me and mistook
his man. Lord knows I wasn't fit to go."

He leaned his elbow heavily on the table, resting his head on his hand.

"If Jacobs went on in my place, sacrificed for my sins, so help me God,
I'll carry on his work here. I'll fight the liquor business to the end of
my days. There shan't no joint nor doggery never open a door on Big Wolf
no more. I'll do a man's part for the world I've been doin' for my own
profit most of my life."

His brow cleared, and a new expression came to the bluff countenance. The
humaneness within him was doing its perfect work.

"But about this mail, now." He took up the letter again. "Carey says he
ain't coming back. Him and young Aydelot's dead sure to go to China soon.
An' I'm to handle his business as per previous directions. This is the
first of it. Somebody puttin' on mournin' style, I reckon."

Champers took up a black-edged envelope, whose contents told him as Dr.
Horace Carey's representative that Miss Jane Aydelot of Cloverdale was no
longer living and much more as unnecessary to the business of the moment
as a black-bordered envelope is unnecessary to the business of life. Then
he opened a drawer in his small office safe and took out a bundle of
letters.

"Here's a copy of her will. That's to go to Miss Shirley to read. An' a
copy of old Francis Aydelot's will. What's the value of that, d' you
reckon? Also to be showed to Miss Leigh Shirley. An' here's--what?"

Darl