t.

"Better than you do me, Jean?"

She did not answer at once; then she caught her father's eye, and smiled
as she said:

"You want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"Go on," was the judge's quiet reply.

"Then it is 'yes,' father."

A shadow passed over the face of the judge for an instant that carried
Jean back to her childhood days, when she used to wonder, as she mused,
why it was that her father always looked so sad.

"You have all the sweet ways of your mother, child," said the old man;
"and in you I know the traits and intellect that I had hoped to nurture
in the boy. For years you have been my comrade--my best loved daughter.
I am growing old, now, quite old, and you must leave me."

As he spoke he ran his fingers through his hair, as if in its thinness
and fading color he could discern advancing years.

Jean caught the hand that hung over the arm of the chair between her two
and pressed it to her cheek.

"You make me happy, father!" she whispered. "Do you remember long ago I
told you that you would some day be glad I was your boy? And so you are.
Perhaps it is because I am so like you--I only wish I knew I was--or
perhaps I have always loved you best, and yet I have not loved you
enough, father."

"Yes, child. Yes, enough to drive away a grief and make me happy."

"Then, remember, father; remember always and forever, that I do not love
you any less. If I have come to love another more, I tell you truly, I
cannot help it. It has come to me--just come and--come and come; and I
have fought it every step of the way. A few times I have pictured to
myself such a man as I might some time call my husband. He has been
learned and clean and upright, with an irrepressible spirit of
patriotism, hindered by no party ties that bind to money instead of
moral questions; daunted by no fear, and bound by no memory of a past;
and the man has come, and he is--a gentlemanly liquor dealer. But I will
not leave you, father. I have no thought other than to stay here."

This information did not seem to impress the judge.

"You say so, Jean. You mean so; but you will be married, and a wife's
duties come before a daughter's."

Jean laughed again.

"You look almost as disconsolate as Mr. Allison did the last time I saw
him. Cheer up! I am not going to be married that I know of."

"No?"

"No, father."

"Why, Jean?"

"I see you know that Mr. Allison is a liquor dealer no longer, or you
woul