Show RIAL I 1 S T 0 OF y E A T T clil ATI JUL I 1 jul a C L 1 r to S by frederick 4 author sf the other covian etc t illustrations by ray walters copyright by J 13 lippincott co 8 SYNOPSIS andy meleen elben Af aged millionaire miner Is flying dying and orders a will drawn up leaving ill ai his property to the son of a sister or of whom lie he has heard nothing for years nd ind i whose married name he does not N enow ow moleen was married years before to ut iut left his wife after a quarrel in which ie struck her ho he learned later that she end their daughter were dead the scene 8 to 0 new ew york introducing wilfrid tennis who ho Is telling his fiancee eunice revecca what he would do if lie he were t the e possessor of wealth in the law of ct of carboy passavant cozine at N for the estate of meleen roger bews aws reports leports the result of his search for beirs of meleen he conceals the fact that ie 10 has discovered that meleena Me Afe leens daughter s living wilfrid stennis replies to an advertisement verti for information concerning t told his Is dead mother martha abeleen and Is told that he Is the heir to andy meleena Me leens millions he wants to marry eunice at once but she resolutely demurs he meets clara passavant frivolous daughter of his attorney eunice becomes jealous of wilfrida Wilf rids attentions to clara ho he builds a yacht and starts on a trip abroad the F 1 Pass avants being included in the party 4 1 1 CHAPTER VI J when roger hews was dispatched to pennsylvania as aa the confidential 1 I agent of carboy passavant cozine I 1 to verify the strange story told by andrew meleen on his deathbed death bed he unearthed a far more curvous and I 1 complicated series of episodes so y unusual and unexpected as to suggest to his fertile and not over scrupulous mind a plot by which the knowledge thus gained might be turned to his own advantage in several ways briefly told this Is what he discovered after much painstaking piecing together of fact and inference when minna meleen found herself as she supposed cup posed deserted by her husband so soon after their marriage unable to beartha bear the taunts and gibes of the village women she left the outskirts of hazleton then little more than a hamlet and tramped across the mountains to nanticoke here being a complete stranger she resumed her maiden name of minna tod passing herself oft off as a widow and making a living by sewing and doing chores here a daughter was born to her A year and more had elapsed since leaving hazleton when seemingly authentic tidings reached her that her husband andrew meleen eleen Al had been killed in battle so go to her the erstwhile fiction became a cruel and bitter fact believing herself a free woman and being still young anti and handsome her scolding 9 tongue and fiery 11 bory temper somewhat cooled by her misfortunes she permitted herself to be once more wooed and won this time by an artisan named john Tre in less than a year she presented Tre also with a daughter but this time she died during her accouchement couch ement and the infant with her and was burled buried in nanticoke exactly as roger hews reported this event it must have been which reached the ears of andrew meleen denuded of the one vital fact that minna had married again and that his own child still lived to thedac the day of her death john ca supposed she abe had beon been really a widow when she married him as of course did minna herself the only deception she had practiced consisted in the concealment of her true name when minna died john Tre cherished her first born the little eunice as his own bringing her up under his name giving her a good education even sending her to a country seminary for a couple of terms then in turn ho he moved away and no conein one in nanticoke heard of him V for many years so much of the past roger hews had discovered when he returned to san francisco to report to mr carboy we have seen how he suppressed the essential facts completely misleading the astute lawyer when he went east for good it was with the idea of tracing john Tre and his stepdaughter he hoped that the girl still lived and that fortified with proofs of the foregoing facts he could eventually produce her as the rightful heir to the millions of old andrew meleen for that she was his legitimate daughter born in lawful wedlock no one would be able to gainsay in the face of the evidence he could produce in one of two or three ways hews proposed to turn this valuable secret to his own profit if the girl were alive and unmarried and in humble circumstances he would try to make her his wito wife and divulge the truth afterwards in which case roger hews would have I 1 t to say concerning the spending and scattering of old andrews hoarded wealth if the girl were already wedded to another then he hoped to find his account by selling her and her husband the story on the best terms possible thirdly if neither of these things were the case then he coula find a market for his wares with wilfrid ta oil Z aai OM hews was content to play a waiting game stennis who might be expected to pay handsomely for the suppression of the secret thus insuring to himself a clear title to the property it was a clear case of heads I 1 win tails you losel lose so far as he could see only one could defeat the major plot the daughter of minna and andrew meleen might be dead it took roger hews three or four months to trace the migrations of john Tre cover covering coveri ilg bg ah as they did a period of ten or twelve years but run him to earth at last he did and found to his joy that eunice was very much alive and well worth winning for her own sake but one other thing was not so much to his liking the discovery that eunice and the man in possession bad been friends for years and were even then supposed to be engaged lovers this was an adverse conjunction which the test mind could not have imagined or foreseen indeed it was of a piece with all the other strange factors factora in the case however roger hews was content to play a waiting game he was very careful to keep out of wilfrida Wilf rids way but he lost no time in making the ac of eunice and her stepfather and at the time of wilfrida Wilf rids departure for europe roger had been fo for r some months on terms of easy acquaintance with both of them he attended the same church as eunice he joined the ward club and the lodge to which Tre belonged and among the decent denizens of macdougal street passed as a writer a character which was not belled belied by appearances owing to his quiet steady demeanor and his careful 5 acting and dressing of the part nor did it take hews long to discover that there was a little rift in the lute between eunice and wilfrid this exactly suited his book perhaps a less observant person could have foretold such an outcome of their odd romance anyway this was rogers opportunity As wilfrida Wilf rids visits became fewer and the coast more clear the other took to dropping in of an ev evening ehing ostensibly to see john Tre or he would contrive to meet eunice at church and prayer meeting and walk home with her he even escorted her to the park to the theater and to some popular concerts never by word or look or action did he hint of af any knowledge of her acquaintance with wilfrid stennis she on her part from motives of pride and delicacy forebode fo to allow stennis name to pass her lips old john I 1 Tre was naturally closemouthed close mouthed about his own or his daughters affairs so it was a three cor cornered game at no time Is the average woman supposed to be more approachable to a determined wooer than when she has been deserted or deems herself forsaken by another man tion as the wound Is deep so is the healing process possibly hastened if there be a sure and certain consolation at hand but bunici Tre was not an average woman her heart did not always rule her head when nearly a year had passed without so much as a line from wilfrid eunice deemed herself indeed forgotten what she had feared and foreseen she told herself was co come me to pass pas s and that woman as 8 she he termed clara passavant in her thoughts had probably won him avay aray from his early affection by her wiles and her brilliant social attainments 1 I suppose we are not in his class any longer she said to herself bitterly but she will never make him happy all she cares about is the money she did not bor would not blame wilfrid it was all that womans comans wo mans evil doings yet she tried her best to think of him film as dead to her and to face the fact that henceforth she must piece out her life alone but it was a sorry attempt eunice had not been a woman had she failed to see the drift of master rogers coming and goings hers was too sweet a nature not to feel honored by what she supposed was the unselfish admiration of a passably good man he had apparently succeeded in ingratiating himself with her stepfather and his companionship proved a rather welcome diversion in those dark days but she knew his lovequest love quest was he hopeless p eless and discouraged his more m marked attentions for she told herself her heart was dead so when roger hews pressed his suit he never made love to her as wilf had d done one she was ready with her answer it cannot be mr air hews she said as they stood in the dim old parlor 1 I esteem and admire you as a friend but I 1 shall never marry perhaps I 1 have been too hasty said roger suavely in time possibly you will like me better ut let me still be your friend and comrade I 1 will not recur to this without your bermis ni but some day I 1 shall ask you again she shook her head in token that his was a forlorn hope but she was too kindhearted kind hearted to inflict a hurt where she could avoid it it on those conditions then she said wo we may still bo be friends but I 1 shall never change my mind cur cuned od ti hews bews muttered when aen he he found himself on the froug side aido of the door she loves lovea him 4 still I 1 I 1 wish he would get married himself then my lady perhaps sing another song CHAPTER vil VII as jaded and surfeited ready to cry vanity of vanities all Js is vanity wilfrid stennis returned to his native land after two years of kaleidoscopic experiences in thu tho chief capitals of the old world he had plunged into the vortex of life only to be flung out of the worry and whirl as a spent swimmer Is spewed skewed opt on the sand by some mad rushing breaker into those two years ho greedily crowded together enough vicissitudes to last another and better seasoned mind and body a decade at least pery haps his almost total lack of previous social training and preparation led the sooner to inevitable satiety it was like a starveling gorging himself on a 12 course dinner of highly spiced and seasoned viands certain it is that his one overmastering desire at last took the form of an acute nostalgia a longing to get away from glittering generalities and sybaritic luxury and settle down somewhere to a life of plain and polished ease so he left the kestrel to follow at leisure the original nal yachting party was disbanded long since and came home by the oregon on one of the last trips of that doomed greyhound of the ocean in appearance stennis was not much changed save for a little more fullness of face and figure a rather tired look about the eyes and what was more noticeable just a suspicion of grayness in the hair around the temples and this at 30 in manner ho he had certainly improved you would have at once set him down as a well trained and well groomed man odthe of the world an intense and overweening craving for simpler manners and homelier 1 1 fare led his steps straight from the pier to the little house in macdougal street around which were clustered by far the pleasant est memories he had bad ever known eunice was at home and herself opened the door so no retreat no denial was possible why mr stennis she cried in 1 genuinely as astonished tont shed accents in the total surprise of the moment it was all she could find to say As he stepped across the threshold his gaze sought hers but in the act of shaking hands apparently a mere ly perfunctory ceremony on the girls part her eyes were veiled and the sole aole token of emotion she betrayed was a little telltale tell tale red signal flag in her usually olive pale cheeks have you no word of welcome belcome vel come tor for me eunice eunic ea said wilfrid reproachfully surely was the answer we 7 I 1 am glad to see you baik safe and sound and looking so well when did you arrive scarcely an hour ago I 1 came straight here during the voyage across wilfrid P had in divers ways pictured to him self this meeting there was to be a sort of killing of the fatted batted calf although in no sense did lie he regard himself as enacting the role of the prodigal he had been made toor too much of while abroad for that and thou though h he know knew in his heart of hearts that he had probably forfeited all right thereto in fancy lie he had dwelt with an inward glow over the glad greeting which eunice was to extend he had even pictured to himself in a hazy way her flinging herself into his bis arms and with tear lear wet cheeks taking him to herself again but this commonplace everyday every day how de do mr stennis and the total absence of emotion grave or gay cool or ardent was like passing at one step from the hot sunshine of the plains of lorn lom bardy to ohp the ice crowned steeps of tho the alpine summits beyond TO BE CONTINUED CONTINUE Di |