nced for life to a wheeled chair; Vesper's most
successful citizen.

Silent, uncomplaining, unapproachable, and grim, he kept to his rooms in
the Iroquois, oldest of Vesper's highly modern hotels; or was wheeled
abroad by his one attendant, who was valet, confidant, factotum, and
friend--Cornelius Van Lear, withered, parchment-faced, and brown,
strikingly like Rameses II as to appearance and garrulity. It was to Van
Lear that Vesper owed the known history of those forty years of
McClintock's. Closely questioned, the trusted confidant had once yielded
to cajolery.

"We've been away," said Van Lear.

It was remarked that the inexplicable Mitchell House policy remained in
force in the years since McClintock's return; witness the present
incumbent, frivolous Thompson, foreigner from Buffalo--him and his house
parties! It was Mitchell House still, mauger the McClintock millions and
a half-century of possession. Whether this clinging to the old name was
tribute to the free-handed Mitchells or evidence of fine old English
firmness is a matter not yet determined.

The free-handed Mitchells themselves, as a family, were no more. They had
scattered, married or died, lost their money, gone to work, or otherwise
disappeared. Vesper kept knowledge of but two of them: Lawyer Oscar,
solid, steady, highly respectable, already in the way of becoming Squire
Mitchell, and like to better the Mitchell tradition of prosperity--a warm
man, a getting-on man, not to mention that he was the older nephew and
probable heir to the McClintock millions; and Oscar's cousin, Stanley,
youngest nephew of the millions, who, three years ago, had defied
McClintock to his face. Stan Mitchell had always been wild, even as a
boy, they said; they remembered now.

It seemed that McClintock had commanded young Stan to break his
engagement to that Selden girl--the schoolma'am at Brookfield,
my dear--one of the hill people. There had been a terrible scene.
Earl Dawson was staying at the Iroquois and his door happened to be
open a little.

"Then you'll get none of my money!" said the old gentleman.

"To hell with your money!" Stan said, and slammed the door.

He was always a dreadful boy, my dear! So violent and headstrong! Always
picking on my poor Johnny at school; Johnny came home once with the most
dreadful bruise over his eye--Stanley's work.

So young Stan flung away to the West three years ago. The Selden girl
still teaches the Brookfield District;