ee if
you have a nephew named Ward Porton."

"Well, I did have a nephew by that name, but he's a nephew of mine no
longer!" cried Obadiah Jones, his face showing sudden anger. "If you
came here in his behalf, the sooner you get out the better! I wrote to
him and told him I never wanted to see him nor hear from him again!"

"I didn't come in his behalf, Mr. Jones. I came on my own account,"
answered Dave. "All I want to know is: Is he a real nephew of yours or
not?"

"Yes, he's my real nephew--the son of my youngest sister, who married a
good-for-nothing army man. But that doesn't make any difference to me,
young man. I won't do a thing more for him, nephew though he is. He's a
young scamp, and as I said before, I never want to see him nor hear from
him again."

"The reason I ask is, because there has come up a question regarding
Ward Porton's identity," continued Dave, who could scarcely conceal his
satisfaction over the turn the conversation had taken. "Porton declared
to me that he had been brought up in a Maine poorhouse."

"That's all tommy-rot, young man! It isn't so at all!" stormed Obadiah
Jones. "After his father ran away, to join some revolutionists in
Mexico, his mother was hard put to it to support herself, and when she
took sick and died, he was placed in the Lumberville poorhouse by some
neighbors. As soon as I heard of it I sent for him to come to
Montpelier, where I was then doing business. After that I brought him
here. I gave him a good education and did everything I could to set him
on his feet, but he began to smoke and drink and gamble, and get into
bad company generally, and finally he left here and went on the stage as
an actor. I heard he didn't do very well at that business, and so he got
into the moving-picture business." Obadiah Jones looked sharply at
Dave. "But what do you want to know all this for?" he questioned,
quickly.

"I'll tell you why, Mr. Jones," answered Dave. And without waiting to be
invited he sat down on a chair beside the lumber dealer and told the man
the particulars of the trouble Ward Porton had caused him.

"Humph!" snorted Obadiah Jones at the conclusion of the recital. "That
sounds just like one of Ward's fairy tales. Don't you take any stock in
that story, because there is absolutely nothing in it. I have disowned
him, it is true, but, nevertheless, he is my nephew, the son of my
youngest sister, Clarice Jones Porton. Her good-for-nothing husband was
Lieutenant