e the
robins will come and cover them with leaves."

"But the big uncle," her father asked.

"Poor fellow," Mrs. Meredith said. "Judge Rutherford is finest when he
enlarges on him. He says, over and over again, as if it were a kind of
argument, 'Tom, now--Tom, he wants those two young ones to be happy. He
says nature fixed it all for them, so that they could be happy--and he
doesn't want to see it spoiled. He says love ain't treated fair, as a
rule, and he wants to see it given a show--a real show.'"

At least one pair of deeply interested listener's eyes were fixed upon
her. They were the Reverend John Baird's.

"It might be a beautiful thing to see," he said. "One does not see it.
There seems a fate against it. The wrong people meet, or the right ones
do not until it is too late."

"I should like to see it myself," said the host, "but I am afraid that
the argument--as an argument--would not support a claim on the
Government."

"I am going to see the claimants and hear all the arguments they can
bring forward," was Mrs. Meredith's conclusion. "I want to see Romeo and
Juliet together."

"May I go with you?" asked Baird.

Latimer had not come in when he returned to their lodgings. He also had
been out to spend the evening. But it was not many minutes before Baird
heard his latch-key and the opening of the front door. He came upstairs
rather slowly.

"You are either ill," Baird said, when he entered, "or you have met with
some shock."

"Yes; it was a shock," was the answer. "I have been dragged back into the
black pit of twenty years ago."

"Twenty years?" said Baird.

"I have seen the man who--was with us in the hillside cabin, through that
night she died. He passed me in the street."

Baird stood still and looked at him without speaking. What was there to
be said?

"He is such a noticeable looking fellow," Latimer went on, "that I felt
sure I could find out who he was. In the mountains they called him 'Big
Tom D'Willerby.' His real name is De Willoughby, and he has been here for
some months in pursuit of a claim, which is a great deal talked about."

"The great De Willoughby claim?" said Baird. "They talked of it to-night
at dinner."

Latimer tapped the table nervously with the fingers of an unsteady hand.

"He may be living within a hundred yards of us--within a hundred yards,"
he said. "We may cross each other's path at any moment. I can at least
know--since fate has brought us together again--I