ere else,' cried Helen pointedly. 'Papa,
if you have stumbled on a real gold mine at last, aren't you wise
enough this time to keep still about it?'

'That word "stumbled," my dear,' Longstreet told her with great
dignity, 'is extremely offensive to me at a moment like this. It is a
word which you have employed in this same connexion before to-day, yet
it is one to which I have always objected. In that sure progress which
marks the path a scientific brain has followed, there are no chance
steps. Surely my own daughter, after the evidence I have already
given----'

'That isn't the point,' said Helen hurriedly. 'The only thing that
counts now is that you mustn't go shouting of it from the housetops.'

'Am I shouting, my dear? Am I seeking the housetops?' His dignity
swelled. Also, it was clearly read in his unusually mild eyes that
Helen, in her excitement with her ill-chosen words, had hurt him.
Sanchia Murray, for one, who was older and of wider worldly experience
than Longstreet's other companions of the moment, and who surely knew
as much of human nature, saw something else in his clouded look. It
was an incipient but fast-growing stubbornness. Therefore Sanchia
closed her lips and watched keenly for developments.

'There's a good old pops,' Helen cajoled. She slipped between him and
Sanchia, sending Howard a meaning look. She made use of certain of the
widow's own sort of weapon, putting her two round arms about her
father's neck. Before he quite understood what was happening to him,
she had managed to get him through the door which led to her room at
the rear, and to close the door after them and set her back to it.
Forthwith her cajolery was done with, and taking him by the two
shoulders Helen looked severely into his wondering eyes.

She began speaking to him swiftly, but her voice lowered. She had
marked how Sanchia had sought to follow, how Howard had put his hand on
her arm and Sanchia had shown her teeth. The woman was in fighting
mood, and Helen from the beginning was a little afraid of what she
might succeed in doing.

'Papa,' she said, 'anyone can see what that woman is after. She robbed
you once, and anyone can see that too. You are a dear old innocent
thing and she is artful and deceitful. You are not safe for a minute
in her hands; you must stay right in here until Mr. Howard and I can
send her away.'

She felt Longstreet's body stiffen under her hands.

'If you mean, my dear,