d upon the scene, was given credence. Then, when it
was remembered that this stranger, now known to be Frederic Kaye, had
been injured and supplanted by Archibald Wingate, a faint suspicion
began to rise in men's minds.

Only those who have suffered from it know with what terrible rapidity an
unjust rumor grows and spreads. Inoculated by this evil germ, even the
fairest judgment becomes diseased. Those who had best known Frederic
Kaye, the old people who recalled his frank, impetuous, happy-go-lucky
boyhood, here in the town where he was born and bred; those who had
received good from his hand, and nothing but good; even these joined
with the baser sort in considering the night attack upon the mill owner
"quite natural. Just what might have been expected."

"Of course no one knows what sort of life Kaye's led out there in
Californy. The jumping-off place of creation."

So, instead of finding himself among friends, the returned citizen
discovered that he was among enemies, under the basest of suspicions. He
had remained all night at Fairacres, with the doctor so hastily summoned
there. This gentleman was an old acquaintance, and from him Mr.
Frederic, as he had always been called in distinction from Mr. Kaye, the
artist and his brother-in-law, learned the history of the past weeks.
Yes, even of years.

"It's a pity, a great pity! When I failed to pay what I owed on the
property here, and Salome, my sister, saw that I would lose everything
unless somebody came to my aid, she did so. I hoped, I fully expected,
to be able to return what she advanced. All the world knows now that I
was not."

"She was not the first person who has been ruined by injudicious
indorsement."

The Californian winced. His home-coming was proving a terrible
disappointment to him, and he little dreamed how much worse than
disappointment was yet in store.

"Well, bad luck has pursued me. I have lost in every speculation I ever
undertook. The last I tried was the evaporation of fruits. There's money
in it, if I had the capital--"

"Then you did not know how badly things were going with your sister?"

"I never dreamed it. You knew her well--Salome was never a whiner. If
she had even intimated the straits which she was in, I would have thrown
up every chance and come back at once, to put my shoulder to the wheel
in some shape. I wouldn't have permitted it."

"How happen you here just now?"

"My niece, Amy, wrote me of her mother's death. It