mesake, and nephew on his wife's side. Here,
again, numerous family interests as well as communal speculations were
disappointed. The Champney estate was left entire to the widow, Almeda
Googe Champney, to dispose of as she might deem fit. Her powers of
administratrix were untrammelled save in one respect: Octavius Buzzby
was to remain in his position as factotum on the Champney estate and
adviser for its interests.

It was at this juncture, when Louis Champney died without remembering
his nephew-in-law by so much as a book from his library and the boy was
ten years old, that a crisis was discovered to be imminent in the
fortunes of the Googe-Champney families, the many ramifications of which
were intricately interwoven in the communal life of Flamsted. This
crisis had not been averted; for Aurora Googe, the sister-in-law of Mrs.
Champney and mother of young Champney, sold a part of her land in The
Gore for the first granite quarry, and in so doing changed for all time
the character and fortunes of the town of Flamsted.

For many years Octavius Buzzby had championed openly and in secret the
cause of Aurora Googe and her only son. To-night, while walking slowly
homewards, he was pondering what attitude of mind he must assume, before
he could deal adequately with the momentous event which had been
foreshadowed from the moment he learned from the priest's lips that Mr.
Van Ostend was implicated in the coming of this orphan child. He
recalled that little Alice Van Ostend prattled much about this same
child during the week she had spent recently with her father at
Champ-au-Haut.

Was the mistress of Champ-au-Haut going to adopt her?

Almeda Champney had never wanted the blessing of a child, and, contrary
to her young husband's wishes--he was her junior by twelve years--she
had had her way. Her nature was so absorbingly tenacious of whatever
held her narrow interests, that a child at Champ-au-Haut would have
broken, in a measure, her domination of her weaker-willed husband,
because it would have centred in itself his love and ambition to "keep
up the name." That now, eleven years after Louis Champney's death, she
should contemplate the introduction into her perfectly ordered household
of a child, an alien, was a revelation of appalling moment to Octavius.
He scouted the idea that she would enter the house as an assistant. None
was needed; and, moreover, those small hands could accomplish little in
the next ten years. She