overwrought sort of manner from your mother, Frances."

Frances, who was standing absolutely quiet and still again, smiled
slightly.

"You had something to talk to me about," she said, in her gentlest of
voice.

"To be sure I had. I can tell you I have my worries--wonder I'm
alive--and since your mother died never a bit of sympathy do I get from
mortal. There, read that letter from Spens, and see what you make of it.
Impudent? uncalled for? I should think so; but I really do wonder what
these lawyers are coming to. Soon there'll be no distinctions between
man and man anywhere, when a beggarly country lawyer dares to write to a
gentleman like myself in that strain. But read the letter, Frances;
you'll have to see Spens this afternoon. _I'm_ not equal to it."

"Let me see what Mr. Spens says," answered Frances.

She took the lawyer's letter from the squire's shaking old fingers, and
opened it. Then her face became very pale, and as her eyes glanced
rapidly over the contents, she could not help uttering a stifled
exclamation.

"Yes, no wonder you're in a rage," said the squire. "The impudence of
that letter beats everything."

"But what does Mr. Spens mean?" said Frances. "He says here--unless you
can pay the six thousand pounds owing within three months, his client
has given him instructions to sell the Firs. What does he mean, father?
I never knew that we owed a penny. Oh, this is awful!"

"And how do you suppose we have lived?" said the squire, who was feeling
all that undue sense of irritation which guilty people know so well.
"How have we had our bread and butter? How has the house been kept up?
How have the wages been met? I suppose you thought that that garden of
yours--those vegetables and fruit--have kept everything going? That's
all a woman knows. Besides, I've been unlucky--two speculations have
failed--every penny I put in lost in them. Now, what's the matter,
Frances? You have a very unpleasant manner of staring."

"There was my mother's money," said Frances, who was struggling hard to
keep herself calm. "That was always supposed to bring in something over
two hundred pounds a year. I thought--I imagined--that with the help I
was able to give from the garden and the poultry yard that we--we lived
within our means."

Her lips trembled slightly as she spoke. Fluff was playing "Sweethearts"
on her guitar, and Arnold was leaning with his arms folded against the
trunk of a wide-spreading oak-tree. Was