e remarks on my niece,' he said
peevishly. 'Read that over, see, and tell me if it's all right, if
there's anything to be added or taken away. There's a clause I want
added about the boy, Walter Hepburn. He's been with me a long time, and
though he's a very firebrand, he's faithful and honest. He won't rue
it.'

Mr. Fordyce adjusted his eyeglass and spread out the will before him.
Up-stairs the two young beings, drawn close together by a common sorrow
and a common need, tried to look into the future with hopeful eyes, not
knowing that, in the room below, that very future was being assured for
them in a way they knew not.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIII.

THE LAST SUMMONS.

'You'll look after her, Mr. Fordyce, promise me that?' said the old man
when they had gone over the contents of the will.

'Why, yes, I will, so far as I can,' answered the lawyer, without
hesitation. 'She will not lack friends, you may rest assured. This,' he
added, tapping the blue paper, 'will ensure her more friends than she
may need.'

'Ay, it's from such I want you to guard her. I know how many sharks
there are who would regard an unprotected girl like her as their lawful
prey. She'll marry some day, I hope, and wisely. But it is in the
interval she needs looking after.'

'How old is she?'

'Seventeen and a half, I think.'

'She looks her age--a remarkably calm and self-possessed young lady, I
thought her to-day. And she has no idea of this, you say?'

'Positively none,' answered the old man, with something like a chuckle.
'Why, this very morning we spoke of what she would do when I'm away, but
it doesn't seem to be worrying her much. I never saw a person, old or
young, with greater powers of adapting themselves to any
circumstances,--_any_ circumstances, mind you,--so you needn't be
exercised about her future deportment. She'll astonish you, I promise
you that.'

'You really believe, then, that you won't get better?'

'I know I won't; a man knows these things in spite of himself,' was the
calm reply.

The lawyer looked at him keenly, almost wonderingly. He did not know him
intimately. Only within recent years had he been engaged to manage his
monetary affairs, and only six months before had drawn up the will,
which, it may be said, had considerably surprised him. Looking at him
just then, he wondered whether there might not be depths undreamed of
under the crust of the miser's soul.

'You are behaving very generously