ght,
was here again."

"Oh!"

"He said he would come in the evening. I forgot to tell you. Papa, what
kind of person is he?"

"I don't know. What makes you ask?"

"Why, we think he wasn't always a workingman. Tom says he looks as if he
had been in some kind of business, and then failed."

"What makes you think that, Tom?" I asked the boy.

"Oh, I don't know. He speaks so well."

"He always spoke well, poor fellow," I said with a vague amusement. "And
you're quite right, Tom. He was in business once and he failed--badly."

I went up to my wife's room and told her what the children had said of
Tedham's call, and that he was coming back again.

"Well, then, I think I shall let you see him alone, Basil. I'm
completely worn out, and besides there's no reason why I should see him.
I hope you'll get through with him quickly. There isn't really anything
for you to say, except that we have seen the Haskeths, and that if he is
still bent upon it he can find his daughter there to-morrow evening. I
want you to promise me that you will confine yourself to that, Basil,
and not say a single word more. There is no sense in our involving
ourselves in the affair. We have done all we could, and more than he had
any right to ask of us, and now I am determined that he shall not get
anything more out of you. Will you promise?"

"You may be sure, my dear, that I don't wish to get any more involved in
this coil of sin and misery than you do," I began.

"That isn't promising," she interrupted. "I want you to promise you'll
say just that and no more."

"Oh, I'll promise fast enough, if that's all you want," I said.

"I don't trust you a bit, Basil," she lamented. "Now, I will explain to
you all about it. I've thought the whole thing over."

She did explain, at much greater length than she needed, and she was
still giving me some very solemn charges when the bell rang, and I knew
that Tedham had come. "Now, remember what I've told you," she called
after me, as I went to the door, "and be sure to tell me, when you come
back, just how he takes it and every word he says. Oh, dear, I know
you'll make the most dreadful mess of it!"

By this time I expected to do no less, but I was so curious to see
Tedham again that I should have been willing to do much worse, rather
than forego my meeting with him. I hope that there was some better
feeling than curiosity in my heart, but I will, for the present, call it
curiosity.

I met him in t