onate child. He knew her unusual mentality. He realised,
none better, that he was dealing with a strong woman's mind in a girl of
childhood's years. He knew that Nancy had inherited largely from her
father, that headstrong, headlong creature whose mentality had driven
him to every length in a wild endeavour to upset civilisation that he
might witness the birth of a millennium in the ashes of a world
saturated with the blood of countless, helpless creatures. So he checked
the impulsive flow of the child's protest. He held out his hands.

"You'd best let me take your coat, my dear," he said, with a smile the
girl found it impossible to resist. "Maybe you'd like to remove your
overshoes, too. There's a big talk to make, and I want to get things
fixed so you can come right along up home and take food with us before
you go back to Marypoint."

The child capitulated. But she needed no assistance. Her coat was
removed in a moment and flung across a chair, and she stood before him,
the slim, slightly angular schoolgirl she really was.

"Guess I'll keep my rubbers on," she said. Then she added with a laugh
which a moment before must have been impossible. "That way I'll feel I
can run away when I want to. What next?"

"Why, just sit right here."

The lawyer drew up a chair and set it beside his desk. His movements
were swift now. He had no desire to lose the girl's change of mood.

And Nancy submitted. She took the chair set for her while the man she
loved to call "Uncle Charlie" passed round to his. He gave her no time
for further reflection, but plunged into his talk at once.

"Now, my dear," he said earnestly, "you came here feeling pretty bad
about things, and maybe I don't blame you. But there isn't the sort of
thing waiting on you you're guessing. Before we get to the real business
I just want to tell you the things in my mind. Of course, as you say,
you're a 'kid' yet--a school-kid, eh? That's all right. But I know you
can get a grip of things that many much older girls could never hope to.
That's why I want to tell you the things I'm going to. Now you've worked
it out in your mind that your stepfather is just a heartless, selfish
creature who has no sort of use for you, and just wants to forget your
existence. He married your mother, but had no idea of taking on her
burdens--that's you. It isn't so. It wasn't so. I know, because this man
is my friend, and I know all there is to know about him. The whole thing
has b