ere. I've come, Calvin, to see if you've
heard about Sam."

Judge Trent settled his head in his neck as though bracing himself. "I
learned of it yesterday, Martha. Pray accept my condolences. I should
have called on you this evening."

"Excuse me," returned Miss Lacey somewhat tartly, "if I say I don't
believe it; and I don't blame you, either. You know very well that
there was no more love lost between my brother and me than there was
between your brother-in-law and you. Sam didn't make your sister Laura
happy, to my shame and sorrow. I'm the one that owes you condolences,
and have any time this twenty years."

"Say ten," returned the judge concisely. "Laura's troubles have been
over for nearly ten years."

"So they have, poor Laura! I used to think that it was such a beautiful
thing that Sam had such an artistic temperament; but how seldom it goes
with the practical! Poor Sam had just enough talent to tempt him away
from a useful business life, and not enough to make his family
comfortable. How I do hope his daughter hasn't inherited his
happy-go-lucky, selfish nature; for there is that girl for us to deal
with, Calvin." Martha Lacey flashed an anxious look at her vis-a-vis.

"Sam's girl, yes," returned the lawyer. His face had become
expressionless. His shoulders had humped forward. He reminded his
companion of some animal who instinctively draws itself together to
avoid the enemy's detection. So a tree-toad clings against the bark. So
a porcupine rolls itself into a ball. To Miss Lacey the latter simile
would have been more appealing. She dreaded the arrows he could launch.

"Sam's girl, yes; but Laura's girl, too, Calvin."

"Well?" he responded non-committally, and his face and figure seemed
incapable of moving a muscle.

"I couldn't go 'way out to Illinois to the funeral even if I'd known in
time," said Miss Lacey plaintively. "I couldn't think of affording it,
and I wrote Sylvia so."

"Then you have been in correspondence with her?" asked the lawyer, and
his cold manner appeared to seize an advantage.

"No, I haven't," responded Martha quickly. "It wasn't till Sam's life
was despaired of that she wrote to me, as in duty bound. Of course I
answered her; but do you believe, Calvin Trent, before my letter had
time to get there--I wasn't very prompt--she wrote again, and said it
was all over and some friends were paying her expenses to Boston, and
she'd be here on Tuesday."

Miss Lacey leaned back in he