k
out of Dad's money to cover the amount, and that'll be a comfort to you;
you'll know where some of it is, at any rate."

"Forgery!" he groaned. "It is outrageous, Willa! Scandalous! A young
woman of your position consorting with a criminal! Oh, we have all been
too easy with you; we permitted you to defy us, and now you will disgrace
the name you bear! I knew that you had been associated with desperadoes
of the lowest type, but I thought that now--"

"Just a minute, Mr. North!" Her tone was ominous. "We'll leave my old
friends out of this, if you don't mind."

But Mr. North was far too agitated to take heed.

"This will kill your Cousin Irene--!"

"I expect it would," she interposed soberly. "But she will never know
it, Mr. North. What I tell you now must never go beyond this room."

Forthwith, Willa related the whole story just as it had fallen from
Vernon's unhappy lips, and the attorney listened in consternation. She
eliminated, however, all mention of Wiley's knowledge that the check was
a forgery and his attempt to drive a bargain on the strength of it.

"Mr. Wiley meant to put the check through, of course, but he mislaid it,"
she substituted. "When he returned a few days ago, he came upon it among
his papers and told Vernon this afternoon that he was going to turn it in
at his bank. Vernon couldn't tell him the truth, because--well, you
wouldn't want a thing like that to be known outside the family, would
you? You are different, you know."

"Why didn't that young whelp come to me?" North snorted. "It's a wonder
his sly wits didn't grasp the fact that I wouldn't prosecute, because of
his father, but I might have started something I couldn't stop short of a
scandal if the check had been put through and I not known he was at the
bottom of it."

"He was afraid," Willa explained simply. "He isn't really bad, he's only
weak, and I guess you-all have hounded him so that he's just about ready
to stick up a train! He's out in the drawing-room now, and just as soon
as you let me write a check for you I'll bring him in."

"You'll write no check!" thundered North. "Just you send him in here to
me."

"But I must!" Willa pleaded. "Don't you see, it's the turning-point for
him. Let him realize he owes me that money and if he hasn't got a yellow
streak a mile wide, it'll be the making of him. If you just blow him up
and then forgive him, he'll be back where he was before it happened, and
liable