ught you were doing it for
what you believed was my good!"

"And so I am!" The incongruity of thus arguing with a boy of seventeen
did not strike Markham. It was man to man, with the influence of Olive
Treadwell in the reckoning!

"Give me my college first, Uncle Levi, and consider the business
afterward."

"I have worked this thing out, Lansing. I am not likely to change my
mind."

And just then Sandy Morley passed by the window with his dog at his
heels.

"Who is that?" asked Lans indifferently, and a blind impulse spoke
through Markham.

"The boy who will accept the offer I make if you decline it!"

Lansing Hertford got upon his feet. All the forced affection and
respect he had been trained to observe dropped from him. His uncle
seemed a coarse, hard stranger, the surroundings distasteful. A
certain mental homesickness for all the pleasant luxury and environment
of his Aunt Olive's life overcame him. He spoke boyishly.

"I think I will return to Boston to-night, Uncle Levi. There's a train
at seven. I couldn't eat dinner feeling as I do. Good-bye, I'm going
to walk to the station. Will you be good enough to send my traps up
to-morrow. Bid Aunt Tilda good-bye, please."

He put out his hand frankly and was gone before Markham realized the
situation.

"It was not Lans you were fighting," Matilda sagely remarked later when
her brother explained matters to her, "it was his dead father, and
Olive Treadwell. You just better write to the boy, I guess, and get
him to finish out his visit and reconsider. I tell you flat-footed,
Levi, there ain't much give to you when you've worked yourself up, and
I must say I like the lad all the better for the way he stood up for
his kin. They are his kin, and good or bad, that Treadwell woman has
won his affection when we couldn't. And to throw that--that strange
boy at his head in that fashion! It wasn't worthy of you, Levi! It
was downright shallow and you prating always of justice and sane
reasoning!"

What might have happened when Markham had digested his sister's
practical remarks was never to be known, for Olive Treadwell, in blind
fury, and what she considered righteous indignation, prevented.

Weak and unbalanced, but with a deep-seated belief in her social
superiority and worldly knowledge, she sent a letter, by special
delivery, to Bretherton, that left Levi incapable of response:

I suppose you have taken this method of degrading my dead brot