n I had come to look upon it with favor.

As his son, Mr. Farrell explained, my annual allowance would be the
interest on one million dollars, and upon his death his entire fortune
and property he would bequeath to me. He was willing, even anxious, to
put this in writing. In a week he would return to Fairharbor when he
hoped to receive a favorable answer. In the meantime he enclosed a
letter to his housekeeper.

"Don't take anything for granted," he urged, "but go to Fairharbor and
present this letter. See the place for yourself. Spend the week there
and act like you were the owner. My housekeeper has orders to take her
orders from you. Don't refuse something you have never seen!"

This part of the letter made me feel as mean and uncomfortable as a
wet hen. The open, almost too open, methods of Mr. Farrell made my own
methods appear contemptible. He was urging me to be his guest and I
was playing the spy. But against myself my indignation did not last.
A letter, bearing a special delivery stamp which arrived later in the
afternoon from Mrs. Farrell turned my indignation against her, and with
bitterness. She also had been spying. Her letter read:

The Pinkerton I employed to report on you states that after losing you
for a week he located you at New Bedford, that you are living under
the name of Fitzgibbon, and that you have made yourself conspicuous by
attentions to a young person employed in a shop. This is for me a
great blow and disappointment, and I want you to clearly understand Mr.
Farrell's offer is made to you as an unmarried man. I cannot believe
your attentions are serious, but whether they are serious or not, they
must cease. The detective reports the pair of you are now the talk of
Fairharbor. You are making me ridiculous. I do not want a shop-girl for
a daughter-in-law and you will either give up her acquaintance or give
up Harbor Castle!

I am no believer in ultimatums. In attaining one's end they seldom prove
successful. I tore the note into tiny pieces, and defiantly, with Polly
in the seat beside me, drove into the open country. At first we picked
our way through New Bedford, from the sidewalks her friends waved to
her, and my acquaintances smiled. The detective was right. We had indeed
made ourselves the talk of the town, and I was determined the talk must
cease.

We had reached Ruggles Point when the car developed an illness. I got
out to investigate. On both sides of the road were tall hemlocks