tty; not a strapping, rugged,
homely body like me. We wasn't a bit alike.

"So we talked and when she went away to bed she gave me an extra hug and
kiss; came back to give 'em to me, just as she used to when she was a
little girl. I wondered since if she had any inklin' of what was goin'
to happen. I'm sure she didn't; I'm sure of it as I am that it did
happen. She couldn't have kept it from me if she had known--not that
night. She went away to bed and I went to bed, too. I was a long while
gettin' to sleep and after I did I dreamed my first dream about 'Little
Frank.' I didn't call him 'Little Frank' then, though. I don't seem to
remember what I did call him or just how he looked except that he looked
like Ardelia. And the next afternoon she and Strickland went away--to
Boston, he told us."

From that trip they never returned. Morley's influence over his wife
must have been greater even than any of us thought to induce her to
desert her father and Hephzy without even a written word of explanation
or farewell. It is possible that she did write and that her husband
destroyed the letter. I am as sure as Hephzy is that Ardelia did not
know what Morley had done. But, at all events, they never came back
to Bayport and within the week the truth became known. Morley had
speculated, had lost and lost again and again. All of Captain Barnabas's
own money and all intrusted to his care, including my little nest-egg,
had gone as margins to the brokers who had bought for Morley his
worthless eight per cent. wildcats. Hephzy's few thousands in the
savings bank and elsewhere were all that was left.

I shall condense the rest of the miserable business as much as I can.
Captain Barnabas traced his daughter and her husband as far as the
steamer which sailed for England. Farther he would not trace them,
although he might easily have cabled and caused his son-in-law's arrest.
For a month he went about in a sort of daze, speaking to almost no
one and sitting for hours alone in his room. The doctor feared for
his sanity, but when the breakdown came it was in the form of a second
paralytic stroke which left him a helpless, crippled dependent, weak and
shattered in body and mind.

He lived nine years longer. Meanwhile various things happened. I managed
to finish my preparatory school term and, then, instead of entering
college as Mother and I had planned, I went into business--save the
mark--taking the exalted position of entry clerk in a w