nto silence. Then at the first laboured pause, Reuben repeated his
message to Mrs. Gay and stamped slowly out of the back door into the
arms of Jonathan, who was about to enter.

"Halloo! So it's you!" exclaimed the young man in the genial tone which
seemed at once to dispel Kesiah's embarrassment. "I've wanted to talk
with you for two days, but I shan't detain you now for I happen to
know that your granddaughter is hunting for you already. I'll come up
to-morrow and chat awhile in the barn."

Reuben bowed and passed on, a little flattered by the other's intimate
tone, while Gay followed Kesiah into the drawing-room, and put a
question to her which had perplexed him since the night of his arrival.

"Aunt Kesiah, was old Reuben Merryweather on friendly terms with my
uncle?"

She started and looked at him with a nervous twitching of her eyelids.

"I think so, Jonathan, at least they appeared to be. Old Reuben was born
on the place when the Jordans still lived here, and I am sure your uncle
felt that it would be unjust to remove him. Then they fought through the
war together and were both dangerously wounded in the same charge."

He gazed at her a moment in silence, narrowing his intense blue eyes
which were so like the eyes of Reuben's granddaughter.

"Did my uncle show any particular interest in the girl?" he inquired,
and added a little bitterly, "It's not fair to me that I shouldn't know
just where I am standing."

"Yes, he did show a particular interest in her and was anxious that
she should be educated above her station. She was even sent off to a
boarding-school in Applegate, but she ran away during the middle of the
second session and came home. Her grandfather was ill with pneumonia,
and she is sincerely devoted to him, I believe."

"Was there any mention of her in Uncle Jonathan's will?"

"None whatever. He left instructions with Mr. Chamberlayne, however,
which are to be made known next April on Molly's twenty-first birthday.
It is all rather mysterious, but we only know that he owned considerable
property in the far West, which he left away from us and in trust to
his lawyer. I suppose he thought your mother would not be alive when
the girl came of age; for the doctors had agreed that she had only a few
years to live at the utmost."

"What in the devil did my poor mother have to do with it?"

She hesitated an instant, positively scowling in her perplexity.

"Only that I think--I believe your Uncle