culated upon the information Judge Trent was receiving. Perhaps
Sylvia had revolted against being immured on a New England farm and had
escaped to Nat.

The judge dropped the letter and stared ahead of him. Thinkright's
implied accusation nettled him more than all Miss Martha's tearful
reproaches. For the first time his duty toward his niece presented
itself as so reasonable as to be impossible of escape.

He looked at Dunham, who sedulously did not look at him. The young man
was thinking of a _mignonne_ face as he had last seen it with quivering
lips, trying to smile in response to his encouraging parting words. At
last the judge spoke:--

"Well, Thinkright took her up there."

"Ah?" responded Dunham. Whatever his curiosity, he determined that his
conversation on this embarrassing subject should never exceed
monosyllables.

"Sickly looking, is she?" pursued the lawyer after a pause.

"Yes," replied John; then memory reminding him that this was not
strictly the case, he availed himself of the remainder of his
vocabulary: "and no," he added.

"I should like to know what Thinkright means by her being starved,"
said Judge Trent irritably.

Silence from Dunham, frowning at his papers.

"I believe I'll send you up there," began the lawyer after a minute.

"I believe you won't," retorted his subordinate with surprising
promptness.

The older man stared. "I should like to know how the girl is carrying
sail; how she eats, whether she seems contented. An eyewitness, now"--

"Not me," said John briefly.

"Lost your conceit, eh?" asked the judge, grinning.

"No more family parties for me," returned Dunham doggedly.

"Oh, come now, be good-natured and obliging."

"Never again while I live," was the response.

"I've never praised you half enough for your work on that job," said
the judge ingratiatingly. "The more I think of it the more I wonder
where we'd have brought up in the affair if it hadn't been for you."

"You might as well flatter the Sphinx," remarked John impersonally.

Judge Trent laughed. "Afraid of a little girl, eh?"

Dunham shrugged his shoulders. "I shouldn't be the first man. Why don't
you send Miss Lacey?"

"H'm," grunted the judge thoughtfully.

John smiled. "Provide her with a full suit of chain-armor and I fancy
she'd accept the detail."

"I'm going in town to-morrow," soliloquized the judge aloud. "I might
go and ask Edna Derwent."

"Who?" demanded Dunham, looking up with sudden