"I hope you won't put yourself out," observed Helen, politely.

"I am not likely to," returned Mrs. Olstrom. "It is you who will be more likely—— Well!" she finished, without making her meaning very plain.

This reception, to cap all that had gone before since she had arrived at the Grand Central Terminal, chilled Helen. The shock of discovering that her mother's sister was dead—and she and her father had not been informed of it—was no small one, either. She wished now that she had not come to the house at all.

"I would better have gone to a hotel until I found out how they felt toward me," thought the girl from the ranch.

Yet Helen was just. She began to tell herself that neither Mr. Starkweather nor her cousins were proved guilty of the rudeness of her reception. The telegram might have gone astray. They might never have dreamed of her coming on from Sunset Ranch to pay them a visit.

The housekeeper began to warm toward her in manner, at least. She took her up another flight of stairs and to a very large and handsomely furnished chamber, although it was at the rear of the house, and right beside the stairs leading to the servants' quarters. At least, so Mrs. Olstrom said they were.

"You will not mind, Miss," she said, grimly. "You may hear the sound of walking in this hall. It is nothing. The foolish maids call it 'the ghost walk'; but it is only a sound. You're not superstitious; are you?"

"I hope not!" exclaimed Helen.

"Well! I have had to send away one or two girls. The house is very old. There are some queer stories about it. Well! What is a sound?"

"Very true, ma'am," agreed Helen, rather confused, but bound to be polite.

"Now, Miss, will you have some supper? Mr. Lawdor can get you some in the butler's pantry. He has a chafing dish there and often prepares late bites for his master."

"No, ma'am; I am not hungry," Helen declared. "I had dinner in the dining car at seven."

"Then I will leave you—unless you should wish something further?" said the housekeeper.

"Here is your bath," opening a door into the anteroom. "I will place a note upon Mr. Starkweather's desk saying that you are here. Will you need your trunk up to-night, Miss?"

"Oh, no, indeed," Helen declared. "I have a kimono here—and other things. I'll be glad of the bath, though. One does get so dusty traveling."

She was unlocking her bag. For a moment she hesitated, half tempted to take the housekeeper into her confidence regarding her money. But the woman went directly to the door and bowed herself out with a stiff:

"Good-night, Miss."

"My! But this is a friendly place!" mused Helen, when she was left alone. "And they seem to have so much confidence in strangers!"

Therefore, she went to the door into the hall, found there was a bolt upon it, and shot it home. Then she pulled the curtain across the keyhole before sitting down and counting all her money over again.

"They got me doing it!" muttered Helen. "I shall be afraid of every person I meet in this man's town."

But by and by she hopped up, hid the wallet under her pillow (the bed was a big one with deep mattress and downy pillows) and then ran to let her bath run in the little room where Mrs. Olstrom had snapped on the electric light.

She undressed slowly, shook out her garments, hung them properly to air, and stepped into the grateful bath. How good it felt after her long and tiresome journey by train!

But as she was drying herself on the fleecy towels she suddenly heard a sound outside her door. After the housekeeper left her the whole building had seemed as silent as a tomb. Now there was a steady rustling noise in the short corridor on which her room opened.

"What did that woman ask me?" murmured Helen. "Was I afraid of ghosts?"

She laughed a little. To a healthy, normal, outdoor girl the supernatural had few terrors.

"It is a funny sound," she admitted, hastily finished the drying process and then slipping into her nightrobe, kimono, and bed slippers.

All the time her ear seemed preternaturally attuned to that rising and waning sound without her chamber. It seemed to come toward the door, pass it, move lightly away, and then turn and repass again. It was a steady, regular——

Step—put; step—put; step—put——

And with it was the rustle of garments—or so it seemed. The girl grew momentarily more curious. The mystery of the strange sound certainly was puzzling.

"Who ever heard of a ghost with a wooden leg?" she thought, chuckling softly to herself. "And that is what it sounds like. No wonder the servants call this corridor 'the ghost walk.' Well, me for bed!"

She had already snapped out the electric light in the bathroom, and now hopped into bed, reaching up to pull the chain of the reading light as she did so. The top of one window was down half-way and the noise of the city at midnight reached her ear in a dull monotone.

Back here at the rear of the great mansion, street sounds were faint. In the distance, to the eastward, was the roar of a passing elevated train. An automobile horn hooted raucously.

But steadily, through all other sounds, as an accompaniment to them and to Helen Morrell's own thoughts, was the continuous rustle in the corridor outside her door:

Step—put; step—put; step—put.



CHAPTER X

MORNING

The Starkweather mansion was a large dwelling. Built some years before the Civil War, it had been one of the "great houses" in its day, to be pointed out to the mid-nineteenth century visitor to the metropolis. Of course, when the sightseeing coaches came in fashion they went up Fifth Avenue and passed by the stately mansions of the Victorian era, on Madison Avenue, without comment.

Willets Starkweather had sprung from a quite mean and un-noted branch of the family, and had never, until middle life, expected to live in the Madison Avenue homestead. The important members of his clan were dead and gone and their great fortunes scattered. Willets Starkweather could barely keep up with the expenditures of his great household.

There were never servants enough, and Mrs. Olstrom, the very capable housekeeper, who had served the present master's great-uncle before the day of the new generation, had hard work to satisfy the demands of those there were upon the means allowed her by Mr. Starkweather.

There were rooms in the house—especially upon the topmost floor—into which even the servants seldom went. There were vacant rooms which never knew broom nor duster. The dwelling, indeed, was altogether too large for the needs of Mr. Starkweather and his three motherless daughters.

But their living in it gave them a prestige which nothing else could. As wise as any match-making matron, Willets Starkweather knew that the family's address at this particular number on Madison Avenue would aid his daughters more in "making a good match" than anything else.

He could not dower them. Really, they needed no dower with their good looks, for they were all pretty. The Madison Avenue mansion gave them the open sesame into good society—choice society, in fact—and there some wealthy trio of unattached young men must see and fall in love with them.

And the girls understood this, too—right down to fourteen-year-old Flossie. They all three knew that to "pay poor papa" for reckless expenditures now, they must sooner or later capture moneyed husbands.

So, there was more than one reason why the three Starkweather girls leaped immediately from childhood into full-blown womanhood. Flossie had already privately studied the characters—and possible bank accounts—of the boys of her acquaintance, to decide upon whom she should smile her sweetest.

These facts—save that the mansion was enormous—were hidden from Helen when she arose on the first morning of her city experience. She had slept soundly and sweetly. Even the rustling steps on the ghost walk had not bothered her for long.

Used to being up and out by sunrise, she could not easily fall in with city ways. She hustled out of bed soon after daybreak, took a cold sponge, which made her body tingle delightfully, and got into her clothes as rapidly as any boy.

She had only the shoddy-looking brown traveling dress to wear, and the out-of-date hat. But she put them on, and ventured downstairs, intent upon going out for a walk before breakfast.

The solemn clock in the hall chimed seven as she found her way down the lower flight of front stairs. As she came through the curtain-hung halls and down the stairs, not a soul did she meet until she reached the front hall. There a rather decrepit-looking man, with a bleared eye, and dressed in decent black, hobbled out of a parlor to meet her.

"Bless me!" he ejaculated. "What—what—what——"

"I am Helen Morrell," said the girl from Sunset Ranch, smiling, and judging that this must be the butler of whom the housekeeper had spoken the night before. "I have just come to visit my uncle and cousins."

"Bless me!" said the old man again. "Gregson told me. Proud to see you, Miss. But—you're dressed to go out, Miss?"

"For a walk, sir," replied Helen, nodding.

"At this hour? Bless me—bless me—bless me——"

He seemed apt to run off in this style, in an unending string of mild expletives. His head shook and his hands seemed palsied. But he was a polite old man.

"I beg of you, Miss, don't go out without a bit of breakfast. My own coffee is dripping in the percolator. Let me give you a cup," he said.

"Why—if it's not too much trouble, sir——"

"This way, Miss," he said, hurrying on before, and leading Helen to a cozy little room at the back. This corresponded with the housekeeper's sitting-room and Helen believed it must be Mr. Lawdor's own apartment.

He laid a small cloth with a flourish. He set forth a silver breakfast set. He did everything neatly and with an alacrity that surprised Helen in one so evidently decrepit.

"A chop, now, Miss? Or a rasher?" he asked, pointing to an array of electric appliances on the sideboard by which a breakfast might be "tossed up" in a hurry.

"No, no," Helen declared. "Not so early. This nice coffee and these delicious rolls are enough until I have earned more."

"Earned more, Miss?" he asked, in surprise.

"By exercise," she explained. "I am going to take a good tramp. Then I shall come back as hungry as a mountain lion."

"The family breakfasts at nine, Miss," said the butler, bowing. "But if you are an early riser you will always find something tidy here in my room, Miss. You are very welcome."

She thanked him and went out into the hall again. The footman in livery—very sleepy and tousled as yet—was unchaining the front door. A yawning maid was at work in one of the parlors with a duster. She stared at Helen in amazement, but Gregson stood stiffly at attention as the visitor went forth into the daylight.

"My, how funny city people live!" thought Helen Morrell. "I don't believe I ever could stand it. Up till all hours, and then no breakfast until nine. What a way to live!

"And there must be twice as many servants as there are members of the family—— Why! more than that! And all that big house to get lost in," she added, glancing up at it as she started off upon her walk.

She turned the first corner and went through a side street toward the west. This was not a business side street. There were several tall apartment hotels interspersed with old houses.

She came to Fifth Avenue—"the most beautiful street in the world." It had been swept and garnished by a horde of white-robed men since two o'clock. On this brisk October morning, from the Washington Arch to 110th Street, it was as clean as a whistle.

She walked uptown. At Thirty-fourth and Forty-second streets the crosstown traffic had already begun. She passed the new department stores, already opening their eyes and yawning in advance of the day's trade.

There were a few pedestrians headed uptown like herself. Some well-dressed men seemed walking to business. A few neat shop girls were hurrying along the pavement, too. But Helen, and the dogs in leash, had the avenue mostly to themselves at this hour.

The sleepy maids, or footmen, or pages stared at the Western girl with curiosity as she strode along. For, unlike many from the plains, Helen could walk well in addition to riding well.

She reached the plaza, and crossing it, entered the park. The trees were just coloring prettily. There were morning sounds from the not-far-distant zoo. A few early nursemaids and their charges asleep in baby carriages, were abroad. Several old gentlemen read their morning papers upon the benches, or fed the squirrels who were skirmishing for their breakfasts.

Several plainly-dressed people were evidently taking their own "constitutionals" through the park paths. Swinging down from the north come square-shouldered, cleanly-shaven young men of the same type as Dud Stone. Helen believed that Dud must be a typical New Yorker.

But there were no girls abroad—at least, girls like herself who had leisure. And Helen was timid about making friends with the nursemaids.

In fact, there wasn't a soul who smiled upon her as she walked through the paths. She would not have dared approach any person she met for any purpose whatsoever.

"They haven't a grain of interest in me," thought Helen. "Many of them, I suppose, don't even see me. Goodness, what a lot of self-centred people there must be in New York!"

She wandered on and on. She had no watch—never had owned one. As she had told Dud Stone, the stars at night were her clock, and by day she judged the hour by the sun.

The sun was behind a haze now; but she had another sure timekeeper. There was nothing the matter with Helen's appetite.

"I'll go back and join the family at breakfast," the girl thought. "I hope they'll be nice to me. And poor Aunt Eunice dead without our ever being told of it! Strange!"

She had come a good way. Indeed, she was some time in finding an outlet from the park. The sun was behind the morning haze as yet, but she turned east, and finally came out upon the avenue some distance above the gateway by which she had entered.

A southbound auto-bus caught her eye and she signaled it. She not only had brought her purse with her, but the wallet with her money was stuffed inside her blouse and made an uncomfortable lump there at her waist. But she hid this with her arm, feeling that she must be on the watch for some sharper all the time.

"Big Hen was right when he warned me," she repeated, eyeing suspiciously the several passengers in the Fifth Avenue bus.

They were mostly early shoppers, however, or gentlemen riding to their offices. She had noticed the number of the street nearest her uncle's house, and so got out at the right corner.

The change in this part of the town since she had walked away from it soon after seven, amazed her. She almost became confused and started in the wrong direction. The roar of traffic, the rattle of riveters at work on several new buildings in the neighborhood, the hoarse honking of automobiles, the shrill whistles of the traffic policemen at the corners, and the various other sounds seemed to make another place of the old-fashioned Madison Avenue block.

"My goodness! To live in such confusion, and yet have money enough to be able to enjoy a home out of town," thought Helen. "How foolish of Uncle Starkweather."

She made no mistake in the house this time. There was Gregson—now spick and span in his maroon livery—haughtily mounting guard over the open doorway while a belated scrubwoman was cleaning the steps and areaway.

Helen tripped up the steps with a smile for Gregson; but that wooden-faced subject of King George had no joint in his neck. He could merely raise a finger in salute.

"Is the family up, sir?" she asked, politely.

"In Mr. Starkweather's den, Miss," said the footman, being unable to leave his post at the moment. Mr. Lawdor was not in sight and Helen set out to find the room in question, wondering if the family had already breakfasted. The clock in the hall chimed the quarter to ten as she passed it.

The great rooms on this floor were open now; but empty. She suddenly heard voices. She found a cross passage that she had not noticed before, and entered it, the voices growing louder.

She came to a door before which hung heavy curtains; but these curtains did not deaden the sound entirely. Indeed, as Helen hesitated, with her hand stretched out to seize the portiere, she heard something that halted her.

Indeed, what she heard within the next few moments entirely changed the outlook of the girl from Sunset Ranch. It matured that doubt of humanity that had been born the night before in her breast.

And it changed—for the time being at least—Helen's nature. From a frank, open-hearted, loving girl she became suspicious, morose and secretive. The first words she heard held her spell-bound—an unintentional eavesdropper. And what she heard made her determined to appear to her unkind relatives quite as they expected her to appear.



CHAPTER XI

LIVING UP TO ONE'S REPUTATION

"Well! my lady certainly takes her time about getting up," Belle Starkweather was saying.

"She was tired after her journey, I presume," her father said.

"Across the continent in a day-coach, I suppose," laughed Hortense, yawning.

"I was astonished at that bill for taxi hire Olstrom put on your desk, Pa," said Belle. "She must have ridden all over town before she came here."

"A girl who couldn't take a plain hint," cried Hortense, "and stay away altogether when we didn't answer her telegram——"

"Hush, girls. We must treat her kindly," said their father. "Ahem!"

"I don't see why?" demanded Hortense, bluntly.

"You don't understand everything," responded Mr. Starkweather, rather weakly.

"I don't understand you, Pa, sometimes," declared Hortense.

"Well, I'll tell you one thing right now!" snapped the older girl. "I've ordered her things taken out of that chamber. Her shabby old trunk has gone up to the room at the top of the servants' stairway. It's good enough for her."

"We certainly have not got to have this cowgirl around for long," continued Hortense. "She'd be no fit company for Flossie. Flossie's rude enough as it is."

The youngest daughter had gone to school, so she was not present with her saucy tongue to hold up her own end of the argument.

"Think of a girl right from a cattle ranch!" laughed Belle. "Fine! I suppose she knows how to rope steers, and break ponies, and ride bareback like an Indian, and all that. Fine accomplishments for a New York drawing-room, I must say."

"Oh, yes," joined in Hortense. "And she'll say 'I reckon,' and drop her 'g's' and otherwise insult the King's English."

"Ahem! I must warn you girls to be less boisterous," advised their father.

"Why, you sound as though you were almost afraid of this cowgirl, Pa," said Belle, curiously.

"No, no!" protested Mr. Starkweather, hurriedly.

"Pa's so easy," complained Hortense. "If I had my way I wouldn't let her stay the day out."

"But where would she go?" almost whined Mr. Starkweather.

"Back where she came from."

"Perhaps the folks there don't want her," said Belle.

"Of course she's a pauper," observed Hortense.

"Give her some money and send her away, Pa," begged Belle.

"You ought to. She's not fit to associate with Flossie. You know just how Floss picks up every little thing——"

"And she's that man's daughter, too, you know," remarked Belle.

"Ahem!" said their father, weakly.

"It's not decent to have her here."

"Of course, other people will remember what Morrell did. It will make a scandal for us."

"I cannot help it! I cannot help it!" cried Mr. Starkweather, suddenly breaking out and battling against his daughters as he sometimes did when they pressed him too closely. "I cannot send her away."

"Well, she mustn't be encouraged to stay," declared Hortense.

"I should say not," rejoined Belle.

"And getting up at this hour to breakfast," Hortense sniffed.

Helen Morrell wore strong, well-made walking boots. Good shoes were something that she could always buy in Elberon. But usually she walked lightly and springily.

Now she came stamping through the small hall, and on the heels of the last remark, flung back the curtain and strode into the den.

"Hullo, folks!" she cried. "Goodness! don't you get up till noon here in town? I've been clean out to your city park while I waited for you to wash your faces. Uncle Starkweather! how be you?"

She had grabbed the hand of the amazed gentleman and was now pumping it with a vigor that left him breathless.

"And these air two of your gals?" quoth Helen. "I bet I can pick 'em out by name," and she laughed loudly. "This is Belle; ain't it? Put it thar!" and she took the resisting Belle's hand and squeezed it in her own brown one until the older girl winced, muscular as she herself was.

"And this is 'Tense—I know!" added the girl from Sunset Ranch, reaching for the hand of her other cousin.

"No, you don't!" cried Hortense, putting her hands behind her. "Why! you'd crush my hand."

"Ho, ho!" laughed Helen, slapping her hand heartily upon her knee as she sat down. "Ain't you the puny one!"

"I'm no great, rude——"

"Ahem!" exclaimed Mr. Starkweather, recovering from his amazement in time to shut off the snappy remark of Hortense. "We—we are glad to see you, girl——"

"I knew you'd be!" cried Helen, loudly. "I told 'em back on the ranch that you an' the gals would jest about eat me up, you'd be so glad, when ye seen me. Relatives oughter be neighborly."

"Neighborly!" murmured Hortense. "And from Montana!"

"Butcher got another one; ain't ye, Uncle Starkweather?" demanded the metamorphosed Helen, looking about with a broad smile. "Where's the little tad?"

"'Little tad'! Oh, won't Flossie be pleased?" again murmured Hortense.

"My youngest daughter is at school," replied Mr. Starkweather, nervously.

"Shucks! of course," said Helen, nodding. "I forgot they go to school half their lives down east here. Out my way we don't get much chance at schoolin'."

"So I perceive," remarked Hortense, aloud.

"Now I expect you,'Tense," said Helen, wickedly, "have been through all the isms and the ologies there be—eh? You look like you'd been all worn to a frazzle studyin'."

Belle giggled. Hortense bridled.

"I really wish you wouldn't call me out of my name," she said.

"Huh?"

"My name is Hortense," said that young lady, coldly.

"Shucks! So it is. But that's moughty long for a single mouthful."

Belle giggled again. Hortense looked disgusted. Uncle Starkweather was somewhat shocked.

"We—ahem!—hope you will enjoy yourself here while you—er—remain," he began. "Of course, your visit will be more or less brief, I suppose?"

"Jest accordin' to how ye like me and how I like you folks," returned the girl from Sunset Ranch, heartily. "When Big Hen seen me off——"

"Who—who?" demanded Hortense, faintly.

"Big Hen Billings," said Helen, in an explanatory manner. "Hen was dad's—that is he worked with dad on the ranch. When I come away I told Big Hen not to look for me back till I arrove. Didn't know how I'd find you-all, or how I'd like the city. City's all right; only nobody gets up early. And I expect we-all can't tell how we like each other until we get better acquainted."

"Very true—very true," remarked Mr. Starkweather, faintly.

"But, goodness! I'm hungry!" exclaimed Helen. "You folks ain't fed yet; have ye?"

"We have breakfasted," said Belle, scornfully. "I will ring for the butler. You may tell Lawdor what you want—er—Cousin Helen," and she looked at Hortense.

"Sure!" cried Helen. "Sorry to keep you waiting. Ye see, I didn't have any watch and the sun was clouded over this morning. Sort of run over my time limit—eh? Ah!—is this Mr. Lawdor?"

The shaky old butler stood in the doorway.

"It is Lawdor," said Belle, emphatically. "Is there any breakfast left, Lawdor?"

"Yes, Miss Belle. When Gregson told me the young miss was not at the table I kept something hot and hot for her, Miss. Shall I serve it in my room?"

"You may as well," said Belle, carelessly. "And, Cousin Helen!"

"Yep?" chirped the girl from the ranch.

"Of course, while you are here, we could not have you in the room you occupied last night. It—it might be needed. I have already told Olstrom, the housekeeper, to take your bag and other things up to the next floor. Ask one of the maids to show you the room you are to occupy—while you remain."

"That's all right, Belle," returned the Western girl, with great heartiness. "Any old place will do for me. Why! I've slept on the ground more nights than you could shake a stick at," and she tramped off after the tottering butler.

"Well!" gasped Hortense when she was out of hearing, "what do you know about that?"

"Pa, do you intend to let that dowdy little thing stay here?" cried Belle.

"Ahem!" murmured Mr. Starkweather, running a finger around between his collar and his neck, as though to relieve the pressure there.

"Her clothes came out of the ark!" declared Hortense.

"And that hat!"

"And those boots—or is it because she clumps them so? I expect she is more used to riding than to walking."

"And her language!" rejoined Belle.

"Ahem! What—what can we do, girls?" gasped Mr. Starkweather.

"Put her out!" cried Belle, loudly and angrily.

"She is quite too, too impossible, Pa," agreed Hortense.

"With her coarse jokes," said the older sister.

"And her rough way," echoed the other.

"And that ugly dress and hat."

"A pauper relation! Faugh! I didn't know the Starkweathers owned one."

"Seems to me, one queer person in the house is enough," began Hortense.

Her father and sister looked at her sharply.

"Why, Hortense!" exclaimed Belle.

"Ahem!" observed Mr. Starkweather, warningly.

"Well! we don't want that freak in the house," grumbled the younger sister.

"There are—ahem!—some things best left unsaid," observed her father, pompously. "But about this girl from the West——"

"Yes, Pa!" cried his daughters in duet.

"I will see what can be done. Of course, she cannot expect me to support her for long. I will have a serious talk with her."

"When, Pa?" cried the two girls again.

"Er—ahem!—soon," declared the gentleman, and beat a hasty retreat.

"It had better be pretty soon," said Belle, bitterly, to her sister. "For I won't stand that dowdy thing here for long, now I tell you!"

"Good for you, Belle!" rejoined Hortense, warmly. "It's strange if we can't—with Flossie's help—soon make her sick of her visit."



CHAPTER XII

"I MUST LEARN THE TRUTH"

Helen was already very sick of her Uncle Starkweather's home and family. But she was too proud to show the depth of her feeling before the old serving man in whose charge she had been momentarily placed.

Lawdor was plainly pleased to wait upon her. He made fresh coffee in his own percolator; there was a cutlet kept warm upon an electric stove, and he insisted upon frying her a rasher of bacon and some eggs.

Despite all that mentally troubled her, her healthy body needed nourishment and Helen ate with an appetite that pleased the old man immensely.

"If—if you go out early, Miss, don't forget to come here for your coffee," he said. "Or more, if you please. I shall be happy to serve you."

"And I'm happy to have you," returned the girl, heartily.

She could not assume to him the rude tone and manner which she had displayed to her uncle and cousins. That had been the outcome of an impulse which had risen from the unkind expressions she had heard them use about her.

As soon as she could get away, she had ceased being an eavesdropper. But she had heard enough to assure her that her relatives were not glad to see her; that they were rude and unkind, and that they were disturbed by her presence among them.

But there was another thing she had drawn from their ill-advised talk, too. She had heard her father mentioned in no kind way. Hints were thrown out that Prince Morrell's crime—or the crime of which he had been accused—was still remembered in New York.

Back into her soul had come that wave of feeling she experienced after her father's death. He had been so troubled by the smirch upon his name—the cloud that had blighted his young manhood in the great city.

"I'll know the truth," she thought again. "I'll find out who was guilty. They sha'n't drive me away until I have accomplished my object in coming East."

This was the only thought she had while she remained under old Lawdor's eye. She had to bear up, and seem unruffled until the breakfast was disposed of and she could escape upstairs.

She went up the servants' way. She saw the same girl she had noticed in the parlor early in the morning.

"Can you show me my room?" she asked her, timidly.

"Top o' the next flight. Door's open," replied the girl, shortly.

Already the news had gone abroad among the under servants that this was a poor relation. No tips need be expected. The girl flirted her cloth and turned her back upon Helen as the latter started through the ghost walk and up the other stairway.

She easily found the room. It was quite as good as her own room at the ranch, as far as size and furniture went. Helen would have been amply satisfied with it had the room been given to her in a different spirit.

But now she closed her door, locked it carefully, hung her jacket over the knob that she should be sure she was not spied upon, and sat down beside the bed.

She was not a girl who cried often. She had wept sincere tears the evening before when she learned that Aunt Eunice was dead. But she could not weep now.

Her emotion was emphatically wrathful. Without cause—that she could see—these city relatives had maligned her—had maligned her father's memory—and had cruelly shown her, a stranger, how they thoroughly hated her presence.

She had come away from Sunset Ranch with two well-devised ideas in her mind. First of all, she hoped to clear her father's name of that old smirch upon it. Secondly, he had wished her to live with her relatives if possible, that she might become used to the refinements and circumstances of a more civilized life.

Refinements! Why, these cousins of hers hadn't the decencies of red Indians!

On impulse Helen had taken the tone she had with them—had showed them in "that cowgirl" just what they had expected to find. She would be bluff and rude and ungrammatical and ill-bred. Perhaps the spirit in which Helen did this was not to be commended; but she had begun it on the impulse of the moment and she felt she must keep it up during her stay in the Starkweather house.

How long that would be Helen was not prepared to say now. It was in her heart one moment not to unpack her trunk at all. She could go to a hotel—the best in New York, if she so desired. How amazed her cousins would be if they knew that she was at this moment carrying more than eight hundred dollars in cash on her person? And suppose they learned that she owned thousands upon thousands of acres of grazing land in her own right, on which roamed unnumbered cattle and horses?

Suppose they found out that she had been schooled in a first-class institution in Denver—probably as well schooled as they themselves? What would they say? How would they feel should they suddenly make these discoveries?

But, while she sat there and studied the problem out, Helen came to at least one determination: While she remained in the Starkweather house she would keep from her uncle and cousins the knowledge of these facts.

She would not reveal her real character to them. She would continue to parade before them and before their friends the very rudeness and ignorance that they had expected her to betray.

"They are ashamed of me—let them be ashamed," she said, to herself, bitterly. "They hate me—I'll give them no reason for loving me, I promise you! They think me a pauper—I'll be a pauper. Until I get ready to leave here, at least. Then I can settle with Uncle Starkweather in one lump for all the expense to which he may be put for me.

"I'll buy no nice dresses—or hats—or anything else. They sha'n't know I have a penny to spend. If they want to treat me like a poor relation, let them. I'll be a poor relation.

"I must learn the truth about poor dad's trouble," she told herself again. "Uncle Starkweather must know something about it. I want to question him. He may be able to help me. I may get on the track of that bookkeeper. And he can tell me, surely, where to find Fenwick Grimes, father's old partner.

"No. They shall serve me without knowing it. I will be beholden to them for my bread and butter and shelter—for a time. Let them hate and despise me. What I have to do I will do. Then I'll 'pay the shot,' as Big Hen would say, and walk out and leave them."

It was a bold determination, but not one that is to be praised. Yet, Helen had provocation for the course she proposed to pursue.

She finally unlocked her trunk and hung up the common dresses and other garments she had brought with her. She had intended to ask her cousins to take her shopping right away, and she, like any other girl of her age, longed for new frocks and pretty hats.

But there was a lot of force in Helen's character. She would go without anything pretty unless her cousins offered to buy it themselves. She would bide her time.

One thing she hid far back in her closet under the other things—her riding habit. She knew it would give the lie to her supposed poverty. She had sent to Chicago for that, and it had cost a hundred dollars.

"But I don't suppose there'd be a chance to ride in this big town," she thought, with a sigh. "Unless it is hobby-horses in the park. Well! I can get on for a time without the Rose pony, or any other critter on four legs, to love me."

But she was hungry for the companionship of the animals whom she had seen daily on the ranch.

"Why, even the yip of a coyote would be sweet," she mused, putting her head out of the window and scanning nothing but chimneys and tin roofs, with bare little yards far below.

Finally she heard a Japanese gong's mellow note, and presumed it must announce luncheon. It was already two o'clock. People who breakfasted at nine or ten, of course did not need a midday meal.

"I expect they don't have supper till bedtime," thought Helen.

First she hid her wallet in the bottom of her trunk, locked the trunk and set it up on end in the closet. Then she locked the closet door and took out the key, hiding the latter under the edge of the carpet.

"I'm getting as bad as the rest of 'em," she muttered. "I won't trust anybody, either. Now for meeting my dear cousins at lunch."

She had slipped into one of the simple house dresses she had worn at the ranch. She had noticed that forenoon that both Belle and Hortense Starkweather were dressed in the most modish of gowns—as elaborate as those of fashionable ladies. With no mother to say them nay, these young girls aped every new fashion as they pleased.

Helen started downstairs at first with her usual light step. Then she bethought herself, stumbled on a stair, slipped part of the way, and continued to the very bottom of the last flight with a noise and clatter which must have announced her coming long in advance of her actual presence.

"I don't want to play eavesdropper again," she told herself, grimly. "I always understood that listeners hear no good of themselves, and now I know it to be a fact."

Gregson stood at the bottom of the last flight. His face was as wooden as ever, but he managed to open his lips far enough to observe:

"Luncheon is served in the breakfast room, Miss."

A sweep of his arm pointed the way. Then she saw old Lawdor pottering in and out of a room into which she had not yet looked.

It proved to be a sunny, small dining-room. When alone the family usually ate here, Helen discovered. The real dining-room was big enough for a dancing floor, with an enormous table, preposterously heavy furniture all around the four sides of the room, and an air of gloom that would have removed, before the food appeared, even, all trace of a healthy appetite.

When Helen entered the brighter apartment her three cousins were already before her. The noise she made coming along the hall, despite the heavy carpets, had quite prepared them for her appearance.

Belle and Hortense met her with covert smiles. And they watched their younger sister to see what impression the girl from Sunset Ranch made upon Flossie.

"And this is Flossie; is it?" cried Helen, going boisterously into the room and heading full tilt around the table for the amazed Flossie. "Why, you look like a smart young'un! And you're only fourteen? Well, I never!"

She seized Flossie by both hands, in spite of that young lady's desire to keep them free.

"Goodness me! Keep your paws off—do!" ejaculated Flossie, in great disgust. "And let me tell you, if I am only fourteen I'm 'most as big as you are and I know a whole lot more."

"Why, Floss!" exclaimed Hortense, but unable to hide her amusement.

The girl from Sunset Ranch took it all with apparent good nature, however.

"I reckon you do know a lot. You've had advantages, you see. Girls out my way don't have much chance, and that's a fact. But if I stay here, don't you reckon I'll learn?"

The Starkweather girls exchanged glances of amusement.

"I do not think," said Belle, calmly, "that you would better think of remaining with us for long. It would be rather bad for you, I am sure, and inconvenient for us."

"How's that?" demanded Helen, looking at her blankly. "Inconvenient—and with all this big house?"

"Ahem!" began Belle, copying her father. "The house is not always as free of visitors as it is now. And of course, a girl who has no means and must earn her living, should not live in luxury."

"Why not?" asked Helen, quickly.

"Why—er—well, it would not be nice to have a working girl go in and out of our house."

"And you think I shall have to go to work?"

"Why, of course, you may remain here—father says—until you can place yourself. But he does not believe in fostering idleness. He often says so," said Belle, heaping it all on "poor Pa."

Helen had taken her seat at the table and Gregson was serving. It mattered nothing to these ill-bred Starkweather girls that the serving people heard how they treated this "poor relation."

Helen remained silent for several minutes. She tried to look sad. Within, however, she was furiously angry. But this was not the hour for her to triumph.

Flossie had been giggling for a few moments. Now she asked her cousin, saucily:

"I say! Where did you pick up that calico dress, Helen?"

"This?" returned the visitor, looking down at the rather ugly print. "It's a gingham. Bought it ready-made in Elberon. Do you like it?"

"I love it!" giggled Flossie. "And it's made in quite a new style, too."

"Do you think so? Why, I reckoned it was old," said Helen, smoothly. "But I'm glad to hear it's so fitten to wear. For, you see, I ain't got many clo'es."

"Don't you have dressmakers out there in Montana?" asked Hortense, eyeing the print garment as though it was something entirely foreign.

"I reckon. But we folks on the range don't get much chance at 'em. Dressmakers is as scurce around Sunset Ranch as killyloo birds. Unless ye mought call Injun squaws dressmakers."

"What are killyloo birds?" demanded Flossie, hearing something new.

"Well now! don't you have them here?" asked Helen, smiling broadly.

"Never heard of them. And I've been to Bronx Park and seen all the birds in the flying cage," said Flossie. "Our Nature teacher takes us out there frequently. It's a dreadful bore."

"Well, I didn't know but you might have 'em East here," observed Helen, pushing along the time-worn cowboy joke. "I said they was scurce around the ranch; and they be. I never saw one."

"Really!" ejaculated Hortense. "What are killyloo birds good for?"

"Why, near as I ever heard," replied Helen, chuckling, "they are mostly used for making folks ask questions."

"I declare!" snapped Belle. "She is laughing at you, girls. You're very dense, I'm sure, Hortense."

"Say! that's a good one!" laughed Flossie. But Hortense muttered:

"Vulgar little thing!"

Helen smiled tranquilly upon them. Nothing they said to her could shake her calm. And once in a while—as in the case above—she "got back" at them. She kept consistently to her rude way of speaking; but she used the tableware with little awkwardness, and Belle said to Hortense:

"At least somebody's tried to teach her a few things. She is no sword-swallower."

"I suppose Aunt Mary had some refinement," returned Hortense, languidly.

Helen's ears were preternaturally sharp. She heard everything. But she had such good command of her features that she showed no emotion at these side remarks.

After luncheon the three sisters separated for their usual afternoon amusements. Neither of them gave a thought to Helen's loneliness. They did not ask her what she was going to do, or suggest anything to her save that, an hour later, when Belle saw her cousin preparing to leave the house in the same dress she had worn at luncheon, she cried:

"Oh, Helen, do go out and come in by the lower door; will you? The basement door, you know."

"Sure!" replied Helen, cheerfully. "Saves the servants work, I suppose, answering the bell."

But she knew as well as Belle why the request was made. Belle was ashamed to have her appear to be one of the family. If she went in and out by the servants' door it would not look so bad.

Helen walked over to the avenue and looked at the frocks in the store windows. By their richness she saw that in this neighborhood, at least, to refit in a style which would please her cousins would cost quite a sum of money.

"I won't do it!" she told herself, stubbornly. "If they want me to look well enough to go in and out of the front door, let them suggest buying something for me."

She went back to the Starkweather mansion in good season; but she entered, as she had been told, by the area door. One of the maids let her in and tossed her head when she saw what an out-of-date appearance this poor relation of her master made.

"Sure," this girl said to the cook, "if I didn't dress better nor her when I went out, I'd wait till afther dark, so I would!"

Helen heard this, too. But she was a girl who could stick to her purpose. Criticism should not move her, she determined; she would continue to play her part.

"Mr. Starkweather is in the den, Miss," said the housekeeper, meeting Helen on the stairs. "He has asked for you."

Mrs. Olstrom was a very grim person, indeed. If she had shown the girl from the ranch some little kindliness the night before, she now hid it all very successfully.

Helen returned to the lower floor and sought that room in which she had had her first interview with her relatives. Mr. Starkweather was alone. He looked more than a little disturbed; and of the two he was the more confused.

"Ahem! I feel that we must have a serious talk together, Helen," he said, in his pompous manner. "It—it will be quite necessary—ahem!"

"Sure!" returned the girl. "Glad to. I've got some serious things to ask you, too, sir."

"Eh? Eh?" exclaimed the gentleman, worried at once.

"You fire ahead, sir," said Helen, sitting down and crossing one knee over the other in a boyish fashion. "My questions will wait."

"I—ahem!—I wish to know who suggested your coming here to New York?"

"My father," replied Helen, simply and truthfully.

"Your father?" The reply evidently both surprised and discomposed Mr. Starkweather. "I do not understand. Your—your father is dead——"

"Yes, sir. It was just before he died."

"And he told you to come here to—to us?"

"Yes, sir."

"But why?" demanded the gentleman with some warmth.

"Dad said as how you folks lived nice, and knew all about refinement and eddication and all that. He wanted me to have a better chance than what I could get on the ranch."

Mr. Starkweather glared at her in amazement. He was not at all a kind-hearted man; but he was very cowardly. He had feared her answer would be quite different from this, and now took courage.

"Do you mean to say that merely this expressed wish that you might live at—ahem!—at my expense, and as my daughters live, brought you here to New York?"

"That begun it, Uncle," said Helen, coolly.

"Preposterous! What could Prince Morrell be thinking of? Why should I support you, Miss?"

"Why, that don't matter so much," remarked Helen, calmly. "I can earn my keep, I reckon. If there's nothing to do in the house I'll go and find me a job and pay my board. But, you see, dad thought I ought to have the refining influences of city life. Good idea; eh?"

"A very ridiculous idea! A very ridiculous idea, indeed!" cried Mr. Starkweather. "I never heard the like."

"Well, you see, there's another reason why I came, too, Uncle," Helen said, blandly.

"What's that?" demanded the gentleman, startled again.

"Why, dad told me everything when he died. He—he told me how he got into trouble before he left New York—'way back there before I was born," spoke Helen, softly. "It troubled dad all his life, Uncle Starkweather. Especially after mother died. He feared he had not done right by her and me, after all, in running away when he was not guilty——"

"Not guilty!"

"Not guilty," repeated Helen, sternly. "Of course, we all know that. Somebody got all that money the firm had in bank; but it was not my father, sir."

She gazed straight into the face of Mr. Starkweather. He did not seem to be willing to look at her in return; nor could he pluck up the courage to deny her statement.

"I see," he finally murmured.

"That is the second reason that has brought me to New York," said Helen, more softly. "And it is the more important reason. If you don't care to have me here, Uncle, I will find work that will support me, and live elsewhere. But I must learn the truth about that old story against father. I sha'n't leave New York until I have cleared his name."



CHAPTER XIII

SADIE AGAIN

Mr. Starkweather appeared to recover his equanimity. He looked askance at his niece, however, as she announced her intention.

"You are very young and very foolish, Helen—ahem! A mystery of sixteen or seventeen years' standing, which the best detectives could not unravel, is scarcely a task to be attempted by a mere girl."

"Who else is there to do it?" Helen demanded, quickly. "I mean to find out the truth, if I can. I want you to tell me all you know, and I want you to tell me how to find Fenwick Grimes——"

"Nonsense, nonsense, girl!" exclaimed her uncle, testily. "What good would it do you to find Grimes?"

"He was the other partner in the concern. He had just as good a chance to steal the money as father."

"Ridiculous! Mr. Grimes was away from the city at the time."

"Then you do remember all about it, sir?" asked Helen, quickly.

"Ahem! That fact had not slipped my mind," replied her uncle, weakly.

"And then, there was Allen Chesterton, the bookkeeper. Was a search ever made for him?"

"High and low," returned her uncle, promptly. "But nobody ever heard of him thereafter."

"And why did the shadow of suspicion not fall upon him as strongly as it did upon my father?" cried the girl, dropping, in her earnestness, her assumed uncouthness of speech.

"Perhaps it did—perhaps it did," muttered Mr. Starkweather. "Yes, of course it did! They both ran away, you see——"

"Didn't you advise dad to go away—until the matter could be cleared up?" demanded Helen.

"Why—I—ahem!"

"Both you and Mr. Grimes advised it," went on the girl, quite firmly. "And father did so because of the effect his arrest might have upon mother in her delicate health. Wasn't that the way it was?"

"I—I presume that is so," agreed Mr. Starkweather.

"And it was wrong," declared the girl, with all the confidence of youth. "Poor dad realized it before he died. It made all the firm's creditors believe that he was guilty. No matter what he did thereafter——"

"Stop, girl!" exclaimed Mr. Starkweather. "Don't you know that if you stir up this old business the scandal will all come to light? Why—why, even my name might be attached to it."

"But poor dad suffered under the blight of it all for more than sixteen years."

"Ahem! It is a fact. It was a great misfortune. Perhaps he was advised wrongly," said Mr. Starkweather, with trembling lips. "But I want you to understand, Helen, that if he had not left the city he would undoubtedly have been in a cell when you were born."

"I don't know that that would have killed me—especially, if by staying here, he might have come to trial and been freed of suspicion."

"But he could not be freed of suspicion."

"Why not? I don't see that the evidence was conclusive," declared the girl, hotly. "At least, he knew of none such. And I want to know now every bit of evidence that could be brought against him."

"Useless! Useless!" muttered her uncle, wiping his brow.

"It is not useless. My father was accused of a crime of which he wasn't guilty. Why, his friends here—those who knew him in the old days—will think me the daughter of a criminal!"

"But you are not likely to meet any of them——"

"Why not?" demanded Helen, quickly.

"Surely you do not expect to remain here in New York long enough for that?" said Uncle Starkweather, exasperated. "I tell you, I cannot permit it."

"I must learn what I can about that old trouble before I go back—if I go back to Montana at all," declared his niece, doggedly.

Mr. Starkweather was silent for a few moments. He had begun the discussion with the settled intention of telling Helen that she must return at once to the West. But he knew he had no real right of control over the girl, and to claim one would put him at the disadvantage, perhaps, of being made to support her.

He saw she was a very determined creature, young as she was. If he antagonized her too much, she might, indeed, go out and get a position to support herself and remain a continual thorn in the side of the family.

So he took another tack. He was not a successful merchant and real estate operator for nothing. He said:

"I do not blame you, Helen, for wishing that that old cloud over your father's name might be dissipated. I wish so, too. But, remember, long ago your—ahem!—your aunt and I, as well as Fenwick Grimes, endeavored to get to the bottom of the mystery. Detectives were hired. Everything possible was done. And to no avail."

She watched him narrowly, but said nothing.

"So, how can you be expected to do now what was impossible when the matter was fresh?" pursued her uncle, suavely. "If I could help you——"

"You can," declared the girl, suddenly.

"Will you tell me how?" he asked, in a rather vexed tone.

"By telling me where to find Mr. Grimes," said Helen.

"Why—er—that is easily done, although I have had no dealings with Mr. Grimes for many years. But if he is at home—he travels over the country a great deal—I can give you a letter to him and he will see you."

"Thank you, sir."

"You are determined to try to rake up all this trouble?"

"I will see Mr. Grimes. And I will try to find Allen Chesterton."

"Out of the question!" cried her uncle. "Chesterton is dead. He dropped out of sight long ago. A strange character at best, I believe. And if he was the thief——"

"Well, sir?"

"He certainly would not help you convict himself."

"Not intentionally, sir," admitted Helen.

"I never did see such an opinionated girl," cried Mr. Starkweather, in sudden wrath.

"I'm sorry, sir, if I trouble you. If you don't want me here——"

Now, her uncle had decided that it would not be safe to have the girl elsewhere in New York. At least, if she was under his roof, he could keep track of her activities. He began to be a little afraid of this very determined, unruffled young woman.

"She's a little savage! No knowing what she might do, after all," he thought.

Finally he said aloud: "Well, Helen, I will do what I can. I will communicate with Mr. Grimes and arrange for you to visit him—soon. I will tell you—ahem!—in the near future, all I can recollect of the affair. Will that satisfy you?"

"I will take it very kindly of you, Uncle," said Helen non-committally.

"And when you are satisfied of the impossibility of your doing yourself, or your father's name, any good in this direction, I shall expect you to close your visit in the East here and return to your friends in Montana."

She nodded, looking at him with a strange expression on her shrewd face.

"You mean to help me as a sort of a bribe," she observed, slowly. "To pay you I am to return home and never trouble you any more?"

"Well—er—ahem!"

"Is that it, Uncle Starkweather?"

"You see, my dear," he began again, rather red in the face, but glad that he was getting out of a bad corner so easily, "you do not just fit in, here, with our family life. You see it yourself, perhaps?"

"Perhaps I do, sir," replied the girl from Sunset Ranch.

"You would be quite at a disadvantage beside my girls—ahem! You would not be happy here. And of course, you haven't a particle of claim upon us."

"No, sir; not a particle," repeated Helen.

"So you see, all things considered, it would be much better for you to return to your own people—ahem—own people," said Mr. Starkweather, with emphasis. "Now—er—you are rather shabby, I fear, Helen. I am not as rich a man as you may suppose. But I—— The fact is, the girls are ashamed of your appearance," he pursued, without looking at her, and opening his bill case.

"Here is ten dollars. I understand that a young miss like you can be fitted very nicely to a frock downtown for less than ten dollars. I advise you to go out to-morrow and find yourself a more up-to-date frock than—than that one you have on, for instance.

"Somebody might see you come into the house—ahem!—some of our friends, I mean, and they would not understand. Get a new dress, Helen. While you are here look your best. Ahem! We all must give the hostage of a neat appearance to society."

"Yes, sir," said Helen, simply.

She took the money. Her throat had contracted so that she could not thank him for it in words. But she retained a humble, thankful attitude, and it sufficed.

He cared nothing about hurting the feelings of the girl. He did not even inquire—in his own mind—if she had any feelings to be hurt! He was so self-centred, so pompous, so utterly selfish, that he never thought how he might wrong other people.

Willets Starkweather was very tenacious of his own dignity and his own rights. But for the rights of others he cared not at all. And there was not an iota of tenderness in his heart for the orphan who had come so trustingly across the continent and put herself in his charge. Indeed, aside from a feeling of something like fear of Helen, he betrayed no interest in her at all.

Helen went out of the room without a further word. She was more subdued that evening at dinner than she had been before. She did not break out in rude speeches, nor talk very much. But she was distinctly out of her element—or so her cousins thought—at their dinner table.

"I tell you what it is, girls," Belle, the oldest cousin, said after the meal and when Helen had gone up to her room without being invited to join the family for the evening, "I tell you what it is: If we chance to have company to dinner while she remains, I shall send a tray up to her room with her dinner on it. I certainly could not bear to have the Van Ramsdens, or the De Vornes, see her at our table."

"Quite true," agreed Hortense. "We never could explain having such a cousin."

"Horrors, no!" gasped Flossie.

Helen had found a book in the library, and she lit the gas in her room (there was no electricity on this upper floor) and forgot her troubles and unhappiness in following the fortunes of the heroine of her story-book. It was late when she heard the maids retire. They slept in rooms opening out of a side hall.

By and by—after the clock in the Metropolitan tower had struck the hour of eleven—Helen heard the rustle and step outside her door which she had heard in the corridor downstairs. She crept to her door, after turning out her light, and opening it a crack, listened.

Had somebody gone downstairs? Was that a rustling dress in the corridor down there—the ghost walk? Did she hear again the "step—put; step—put" that had puzzled her already?

She did not like to go out into the hall and, perhaps, meet one of the servants. So, after a time, she went back to her book.

But the incident had given her a distaste for reading. She kept listening for the return of the ghostly step. So she undressed and went to bed. Long afterward (or so it seemed to her, for she had been asleep and slept soundly) she was aroused again by the "step—put; step—put" past her door.

Half asleep as she was, she jumped up and ran to the door. When she opened it, it seemed as though the sound was far down the main corridor—and she thought she could see the entire length of that passage. At least, there was a great window at the far end, and the moonlight looked ghostily in. No shadow crossed this band of light, and yet the rustle and step continued after she reached her door and opened it.

Then——

Was that a door closed softly in the distance? She could not be sure. After a minute or two one thing she was sure of, however; she was getting cold here in the draught, so she scurried back to bed, covered her ears, and went to sleep again.

Helen got up the next morning with one well-defined determination. She would put into practice her uncle's suggestion. She would buy one of the cheap but showy dresses which shopgirls and minor clerks had to buy to keep up appearances.

It was a very serious trouble to Helen that she was not to buy and disport herself in pretty frocks and hats. The desire to dress prettily and tastefully is born in most girls—just as surely as is the desire to breathe. And Helen was no exception.

She was obstinate, however, and could keep to her purpose. Let the Starkweathers think she was poor. Let them continue to think so until her play was all over and she was ready to go home again.

Her experience in the great city had told Helen already that she could never be happy there. She longed for the ranch, and for the Rose pony—even for Big Hen Billings and Sing and the rag-head, Jo-Rab, and Manuel and Jose, and all the good-hearted, honest "punchers" who loved her and who would no more have hurt her feelings than they would have made an infant cry.

She longed to have somebody call her "Snuggy" and to smile upon her in good-fellowship. As she walked the streets nobody appeared to heed her. If they did, their expression of countenance merely showed curiosity, or a scorn of her clothes.

She was alone. She had never felt so much alone when miles from any other human being, as she sometimes had been on the range. What had Dud said about this? That one could be very much alone in the big city? Dud was right.

She wished that she had Dud Stone's address. She surely would have communicated with him now, for he was probably back in New York by this time.

However, there was just one person whom she had met in New York who seemed to the girl from Sunset Ranch as being "all right." And when she made up her mind to do as her uncle had directed about the new frock, it was of this person Helen naturally thought.

Sadie Goronsky! The girl who had shown herself so friendly the night Helen had come to town. She worked in a store where they sold ladies' clothing. With no knowledge of the cheaper department stores than those she had seen on the avenue, it seemed quite the right thing to Helen's mind for her to search out Sadie and her store.

So, after an early breakfast taken in Mr. Lawdor's little room, and under the ministrations of that kind old man, Helen left the house—by the area door as requested—and started downtown.

She didn't think of riding. Indeed, she had no idea how far Madison Street was. But she remembered the route the taxicab had taken uptown that first evening, and she could not easily lose her way.

And there was so much for the girl from the ranch to see—so much that was new and curious to her—that she did not mind the walk; although it took her until almost noon, and she was quite tired when she got to Chatham Square.

Here she timidly inquired of a policeman, who kindly crossed the wide street with her and showed her the way. On the southern side of Madison Street she wandered, curiously alive to everything about the district, and the people in it, that made them both seem so strange to her.

"A dress, lady! A hat, lady!"

The buxom Jewish girls and women, who paraded the street before the shops for which they worked, would give her little peace. Yet it was all done good-naturedly, and when she smiled and shook her head they smiled, too, and let her pass.

Suddenly she saw the sturdy figure of Sadie Goronsky right ahead. She had stopped a rather over-dressed, loud-voiced woman with a child, and Helen heard a good deal of the conversation while she waited for Sadie (whose back was toward her) to be free.

The "puller-in" and the possible customer wrangled some few moments, both in Yiddish and broken English; but Sadie finally carried her point—and the child—into the store! The woman had to follow her offspring, and once inside some of the clerks got hold of her and Sadie could come forth to lurk for another possible customer.

"Well, see who's here!" exclaimed the Jewish girl, catching sight of Helen. "What's the matter, Miss? Did they turn you out of your uncle's house upon Madison Avenyer? I never did expect to see you again."

"But I expected to see you again, Sadie; I told you I'd come," said Helen, simply.

"So it wasn't just a josh; eh?"

"I always keep my word," said the girl from the West.

"Chee!" gasped Sadie. "We ain't so partic'lar around here. But I'm glad to see you, Miss, just the same. Be-lieve me!"



CHAPTER XIV

A NEW WORLD

The two girls stood on the sidewalk and let the tide of busy humanity flow by unnoticed. Both were healthy types of youth—one from the open ranges of the Great West, the other from a land far, far to the East.

Helen Morrell was brown, smiling, hopeful-looking; but she certainly was not "up to date" in dress and appearance. The black-eyed and black-haired Russian girl was just as well developed for her age and as rugged as she could be; but in her cheap way her frock was the "very latest thing," her hair was dressed wonderfully, and the air of "city smartness" about her made the difference between her and Helen even more marked.

"I never s'posed you'd come down here," said Sadie again.

"You asked was I turned out of my uncle's house," responded Helen, seriously. "Well, it does about amount to that."

"Oh, no! Never!" cried the other girl.

"Let me tell you," said Helen, whose heart was so full that she longed for a confidant. Besides, Sadie Goronsky would never know the Starkweather family and their friends, and she felt free to speak fully. So, without much reserve, she related her experiences in her uncle's house.

"Now, ain't they the mean things!" ejaculated Sadie, referring to the cousins. "And I suppose they're awful rich?"

"I presume so. The house is very large," declared Helen.

"And they've got loads and loads of dresses, too?" demanded the working girl.

"Oh, yes. They are very fashionably dressed," Helen told her. "But see! I am going to have a new dress myself. Uncle Starkweather gave me ten dollars."

"Chee!" ejaculated Sadie. "Wouldn't it give him a cramp in his pocket-book to part with so much mazouma?"

"Mazouma?"

"That's Hebrew for money," laughed Sadie. "But you do need a dress. Where did you get that thing you've got on?"

"Out home," replied Helen. "I see it isn't very fashionable."

"Say! we got through sellin' them things to greenies two years back," declared Sadie.

"You haven't been at work all that time; have you?" gasped the girl from the ranch.

"Sure. I got my working papers four years ago. You see, I looked a lot older than I really was, and comin' across from the old country all us children changed our ages, so't we could go right to work when we come here without having to spend all day in school. We had an uncle what come over first, and he told us what to do."

Helen listened to this with some wonder. She felt perfectly safe with Sadie, and would have trusted her, if it were necessary, with the money she had hidden away in her closet at Uncle Starkweather's; yet the other girl looked upon the laws of the land to which she had come for freedom as merely harsh rules to be broken at one's convenience.

"Of course," said Sadie, "I didn't work on the sidewalk here at first. I worked back in Old Yawcob's shop—making changes in the garments for fussy customers. I was always quick with my needle.

"Then I helped the salesladies. But business was slack, and people went right by our door, and I jumped out one day and started to pull 'em in. And I was better at it——

"Good-day, ma'am! Will you look at a beautiful skirt—just the very latest style—we've only got a few of them for samples?" She broke off and left Helen to stand wondering while Sadie chaffered with another woman, who had hesitated a trifle as she passed the shop.

"Oh, no, ma'am! You was no greenie. I could tell that at once. That's why I spoke English to you yet," Sadie said, flattering the prospective buyer, and smiling at her pleasantly. "If you will just step in and see these skirts—or a two-piece suit if you will?"

Helen observed her new friend with amazement. Although she knew Sadie could be no older than herself, she used the tact of long business experience in handling the woman. And she got her into the store, too!

"I wash my hands of 'em when they get inside," she said, laughing, and coming back to Helen. "If Old Yawcob and his wife and his salesladies can't hold 'em, it isn't my fault, you understand. I'm about the youngest puller-in there is along Madison Street—although that little hunchback in front of the millinery shop yonder looks younger."

"But you don't try to pull me in," said Helen, laughing. "And I've got ten whole dollars to spend."

"That's right. But then, you see, you're my friend, Miss," said Sadie. "I want to be sure you get your money's worth. So I'm going with you when you buy your dress—that is, if you'll let me."

"Let you? Why, I'd dearly love to have you advise me," declared the Western girl. "And don't—don't—call me 'Miss.' I'm Helen Morrell, I tell you."

"All right. If you say so. But, you know, you are from Madison Avenyer just the same."

"No. I'm from a great big ranch out West."

"That's like a farm—yes? I gotter cousin that works on a farm over on Long Island. It's a big farm—it's eighty acres. Is that farm you come from as big as that?"

Helen nodded and did not smile at the girl's ignorance. "Very much bigger than eighty acres," she said. "You see, it has to be, for we raise cattle instead of vegetables."

"Well, I guess I don't know much about it," admitted Sadie, frankly. "All I know is this city and mostly this part of it down here on the East Side. We all have to work so hard, you know. But we're getting along better than we did at first, for more of us children can work.

"And now I want you should go home with me for dinner, Helen—yes! It is my dinner hour quick now; and then we will have time to pick you out a bargain for a dress. Sure! You'll come?"

"If I won't be imposing on you?" said Helen, slowly.

"Huh! That's all right. We'll have enough to eat this noon. And it ain't so Jewish, either, for father don't come home till night. Father's awful religious; but I tell mommer she must be up-to-date and have some 'Merican style about her. I got her to leave off her wig yet. Catch me wearin' a wig when I'm married just to make me look ugly. Not!"

All this rather puzzled Helen; but she was too polite to ask questions. She knew vaguely that Jewish people followed peculiar rabbinical laws and customs; but what they were she had no idea. However, she liked Sadie, and it mattered nothing to Helen what the East Side girl's faith or bringing up had been. Sadie was kind, and friendly, and was really the only person in all this big city in whom the ranch girl could place the smallest confidence.

Sadie ran into the store for a moment and soon a big woman with an unctuous smile, a ruffled white apron about as big as a postage stamp, and her gray hair dressed as remarkably as Sadie's own, came out upon the sidewalk to take the young girl's place.

"Can't I sell you somedings, lady?" she said to the waiting Helen.

"Now, don't you go and run my customer in, Ma Finkelstein!" cried Sadie, running out and hugging the big woman. "Helen is my friend and she's going home to eat mit me."

"Ach! you are already a United Stater yet," declared the big woman, laughing. "Undt the friends you have it from Number Five Av'noo—yes?"

"You guessed it pretty near right," cried Sadie. "Helen lives on Madison Avenyer—and it ain't Madison Avenyer uptown, neither!"

She slipped her hand in Helen's and bore her off to the tenement house in which Helen had had her first adventure in the great city.

"Come on up," said Sadie, hospitably. "You look tired, and I bet you walked clear down here?"

"Yes, I did," admitted Helen.

"Some o' mommer's soup mit lentils will rest you, I bet. It ain't far yet—only two flights."

Helen followed her cheerfully. But she wondered if she was doing just right in letting this friendly girl believe that she was just as poor as the Starkweathers thought she was. Yet, on the other hand, wouldn't Sadie Goronsky have felt embarrassed and have been afraid to be her friend, if she knew that Helen Morrell was a very, very wealthy girl and had at her command what would seem to the Russian girl "untold wealth"?

"I'll pay her for this," thought Helen, with the first feeling of real happiness she had experienced since leaving the ranch. "She shall never be sorry that she was kind to me."

So she followed Sadie into the humble home of the latter on the third floor of the tenement with a smiling face and real warmth at her heart. In Yiddish the downtown girl explained rapidly her acquaintance with "the Gentile." But, as she had told Helen, Sadie's mother had begun to break away from some of the traditions of her people. She was fast becoming "a United Stater," too.

She was a handsome, beaming woman, and she was as generous-hearted as Sadie herself. The rooms were a little steamy, for Mrs. Goronsky had been doing the family wash that morning. But the table was set neatly and the food that came on was well prepared and—to Helen—much more acceptable than the dainties she had been having at Uncle Starkweather's.

The younger children, who appeared for the meal, were right from the street where they had been playing, or from work in neighboring factories, and were more than a little grimy. But they were not clamorous and they ate with due regard to "manners."

"Ve haf nine, Mees," said Mrs. Goronsky, proudly. "Undt they all are healt'y—ach! so healt'y. It takes mooch to feed them yet."

"Don't tell about it, Mommer" cried Sadie. "It aint stylish to have big fam'lies no more. Don't I tell you?"

"What about that Preesident we hadt—that Teddy Sullivan—what said big fam'lies was a good d'ing? Aindt that enough? Sure, Sarah, a Preesident iss stylish."

"Oh, Mommer!" screamed Sadie. "You gotcher politics mixed. 'Sullivan' is the district leader wot gifs popper a job; but 'Teddy' was the President yet. You ain't never goin' to be real American."

But her mother only laughed. Indeed, the light-heartedness of these poor people was a revelation to Helen. She had supposed vaguely that very poor people must be all the time serious, if not actually in tears.

"Now, Helen, we'll rush right back to the shop and I'll make Old Yawcob sell you a bargain. She's goin' to get her new dress, Mommer. Ain't that fine?"

"Sure it iss," declared the good woman. "Undt you get her a bargain, Sarah."

"Don't call me 'Sarah,' Mommer!" cried the daughter. "It ain't stylish, I tell you. Call me 'Sadie.'"

Her mother kissed her on both plump cheeks. "What matters it, my little lamb?" she said, in their own tongue. "Mother love makes any name sweet."

Helen did not, of course, understand these words; but the caress, the look on their faces, and the way Sadie returned her mother's kiss made a great lump come into the orphan girl's throat. She could hardly find her way in the dim hall to the stairway, she was so blinded by tears.



CHAPTER XV

"STEP—PUT; STEP—PUT"

An hour later Helen was dressed in a two-piece suit, cut in what a chorus of salesladies, including old Mrs. Finkelstein and Sadie herself, declared were most "stylish" lines—and it did not cost her ten dollars, either! Indeed, Sadie insisted upon going with her to a neighboring millinery store and purchasing a smart little hat for $1.59, which set off the new suit very nicely.

"Sure, this old hat and suit of yours is wort' a lot more money, Helen," declared the Russian girl. "But they ain't just the style, yuh see. And style is everything to a girl. Why, nobody'd take you for a greenie now!"

Helen was quite wise enough to know that she had never been dressed so cheaply before; but she recognized, too, the truth of her friend's statement.

"Now, you take the dress home, and the hat. Maybe you can find a cheap tailor who will make over the dress. There's enough material in it. That's an awful wide skirt, you know."

"But I couldn't walk in a skirt as narrow as the one you have on, Sadie."

"Chee! if it was stylish," confessed Sadie, "I'd find a way to walk in a piece of stove-pipe!" and she giggled.

So Helen left for uptown with her bundles, wearing her new suit and hat. She took a Fourth Avenue car and got out only a block from her uncle's house. As she hurried through the side street and came to the Madison Avenue corner, she came face-to-face with Flossie, coming home from school with a pile of books under her arm.

Flossie looked quite startled when she saw her cousin. Her eyes grew wide and she swept the natty looking, if cheaply-dressed Western girl, with an appreciative glance.

"Goodness me! What fine feathers!" she cried. "You've been loading up with new clothes—eh? Say, I like that dress."

"Better than the caliker one?" asked Helen, slily.

"You're not so foolish as to believe I liked that," returned Flossie, coolly. "I told Belle and Hortense that you weren't as dense as they seemed to think you."

"Thanks!" said Helen, drily.

"But that dress is just in the mode," repeated Flossie, with some admiration.

"Your father's kindness enabled me to get it," said Helen, briefly.

"Humph!" said Flossie, frankly. "I guess it didn't cost you much, then."

Helen did not reply to this comment; but as she turned to go down to the basement door, Flossie caught her by the arm.

"Don't you do that!" she exclaimed. "Belle can be pretty mean sometimes. You come in at the front door with me."

"No," said Helen, smiling. "You come in at the area door with me. It's easier, anyway. There's a maid just opening it."

So the two girls entered the house together. They were late to lunch—indeed, Helen did not wish any; but she did not care to explain why she was not hungry.

"What's the matter with you, Flossie?" demanded Hortense. "We've done eating, Belle and I. And if you wish your meals here, Helen, please get here on time for them."

"You mind your own business!" cried Flossie, suddenly taking up the cudgels for her cousin as well as herself. "You aren't the boss, Hortense! I got kept after school, anyway. And cook can make something hot for me and Helen."

"You need to be kept after school—from the kind of English you use," sniffed her sister.

"I don't care! I hate the old studies!" declared Flossie, slamming her books down upon the table. "I don't see why I have to go to school at all. I'm going to ask Pa to take me out. I need a rest."

Which was very likely true, for Miss Flossie was out almost every night to some party, or to the theater, or at some place which kept her up very late. She had no time for study, and therefore was behind in all her classes. That day she had been censured for it at school—and when they took a girl to task for falling behind in studies at that school, she was very far behind, indeed!

Flossie grumbled about her hard lot all through luncheon. Helen kept her company; then, when it was over, she slipped up to her own room with her bundles. Both Hortense and Belle had taken a good look at her, however, and they plainly approved of her appearance.

"She's not such a dowdy as she seemed," whispered Hortense to the oldest sister.

"No," admitted Belle. "But that's an awful cheap dress she bought."

"I guess she didn't have much to spend," laughed Hortense. "Pa wasn't likely to be very liberal. It puzzles me why he should have kept her here at all."

"He says it is his duty," scoffed Belle. "Now, you know Pa! He never was so worried about duty before; was he?"

These girls, brought up as they were, steeped in selfishness and seeing their father likewise so selfish, had no respect for their parent. Nor could this be wondered at.

Going up to her room that afternoon Helen met Mrs. Olstrom coming down. The housekeeper started when she saw the young girl, and drew back. But Helen had already seen the great tray of dishes the housekeeper carried. And she wondered.

Who took their meals up on this top floor? The maids who slept here were all accounted for. She had seen them about the house. And Gregson, too. Of course Mr. Lawdor and Mrs. Olstrom had their own rooms below.

Then who could it be who was being served on this upper floor? Helen was more than a little curious. The sounds she had heard the night before dove-tailed in her mind with these soiled dishes on the tray.

She was almost tempted to walk through the long corridor in which she thought she had heard the scurrying footsteps pass the night before. Yet, suppose she was caught by Mrs. Olstrom—or by anybody else—peering about the house?

"That wouldn't be very nice," mused the girl.

"Because these people think I am rude and untaught, is no reason why I should display any real rudeness."

She was very curious, however; the thought of the tray-load of dishes remained in her mind all day.

At dinner that night even Mr. Starkweather gave Helen a glance of approval when she appeared in her new frock.

"Ahem!" he said. "I see you have taken my advice, Helen. We none of us can afford to forget what is due to custom. You are much more presentable."

"Thank you, Uncle Starkweather," replied Helen, demurely. "But out our way we say: 'Fine feathers don't make fine birds.'"

"You needn't fret," giggled Flossie. "Your feather's aren't a bit too fine."

But Flossie's eyes were red, and she plainly had been crying.

"I hate the old books!" she said, suddenly. "Pa, why do I have to go to school any more?"

"Because I am determined you shall, young lady," said Mr. Starkweather, firmly. "We all have to learn."

"Hortense doesn't go."

"But you are not Hortense's age," returned her father, coolly. "Remember that. And I must have better reports of your conduct in school than have reached me lately," he added.

Flossie sulked over the rest of her dinner. Helen, going up slowly to her room later, saw the door of her youngest cousin's room open, and glancing in, beheld Flossie with her head on her book, crying hard.

Each of these girls had a beautiful room of her own. Flossie's was decorated in pink, with chintz hangings, a lovely bed, bookshelves, a desk of inlaid wood, and everything to delight the eye and taste of any girl. Beside the common room Helen occupied, this of Flossie's was a fairy palace.

But Helen was naturally tender-hearted. She could not bear to see the younger girl crying. She ventured to step inside the door and whisper:

"Flossie?"

Up came the other's head, her face flushed and wet and her brow a-scowl.

"What do you want?" she demanded, quickly.

"Nothing. Unless I can help you. And if so, that is what I want," said the ranch girl, softly.

"Goodness me! You can't help me with algebra. What do I want to know higher mathematics for? I'll never have use for such knowledge."

"I don't suppose we can ever learn too much," said Helen, quietly.

"Huh! Lots you know about it. You never were driven to school against your will."

"No. Whenever I got a chance to go I was glad."

"Maybe I'd be glad, too, if I lived on a ranch," returned Flossie, scornfully.

Helen came nearer to the desk and sat down beside her.

"You don't look a bit pretty with your eyes all red and hot. Crying isn't going to help," she said, smiling.

"I suppose not," grumbled Flossie, ungrateful of tone.

"Come, let me get some water and cologne and bathe your face." Helen jumped up and went to the tiny bathroom. "Now, I'll play maid for you, Flossie."

"Oh, all right," said the younger girl. "I suppose, as you say, crying isn't going to help."

"Not at all. No amount of tears will solve a problem in algebra. And you let me see the questions. You see," added Helen, slowly, beginning to bathe her cousin's forehead and swollen eyes, "we once had a very fine school-teacher at the ranch. He was a college professor. But he had weak lungs and he came out there to Montana to rest."

"That's good!" murmured Flossie, meaning bathing process, for she was not listening much to Helen's remarks.

"I knew it would make you feel better. But now, let me see these algebra problems. I took it up a little when—when Professor Payton was at the ranch."

"You didn't!" cried Flossie, in wonder.

"Let me see them," pursued her cousin, nodding.

She had told the truth—as far as she went. After Professor Payton had left the ranch and Helen had gone to Denver to school, she had showed a marked taste for mathematics and had been allowed to go far ahead of her fellow-pupils in that study.

Now, at a glance, she saw what was the matter with Flossie's attempts to solve the problems. She slipped into a seat beside the younger girl again and, in a few minutes, showed Flossie just how to solve them.

"Why, Helen! I didn't suppose you knew so much," said Flossie, in surprise.

"You see, that is something I had a chance to learn between times—when I wasn't roping cows or breaking ponies," said Helen, drily.

"Humph! I don't believe you did either of those vulgar things," declared Flossie, suddenly.

"You are mistaken. I do them both, and do them well," returned Helen, gravely. "But they are not vulgar. No more vulgar than your sister Belle's golf. It is outdoor exercise, and living outdoors as much as one can is a sort of religion in the West."

"Well," said Flossie, who had recovered her breath now. "I don't care what you do outdoors. You can do algebra in the house! And I'm real thankful to you, Cousin Helen."

"You are welcome, Flossie," returned the other, gravely; but then she went her way to her own room at the top of the house. Flossie did not ask her to remain after she had done all she could for her.

But Helen had found plenty of reading matter in the house. Her cousins and uncle might ignore her as they pleased. With a good book in her hand she could forget all her troubles.

Now she slipped into her kimono, propped herself up in bed, turned the gas-jet high, and lost herself in the adventures of her favorite heroine. The little clock on the mantel ticked on unheeded. The house grew still. The maids came up to bed chattering. But still Helen read on.

She had forgotten the sounds she had heard in the old house at night. Mrs. Olstrom had mentioned that there were "queer stories" about the Starkweather mansion. But Helen would not have thought of them at this time, had something not rattled her doorknob and startled her.

"Somebody wants to come in," was the girl's first thought, and she hopped out of bed and ran to unlock it.

Then she halted, with her hand upon the knob. A sound outside had arrested her. But it was not the sound of somebody trying the latch.

Instead she plainly heard the mysterious "step—put; step—put" again. Was it descending the stairs? It seemed to grow fainter as she listened.

At length the girl—somewhat shaken—reached for the key of her door again, and turned it. Then she opened it and peered out.

The corridor was faintly illuminated. The stairway itself was quite dark, for there was no light in the short passage below called "the ghost-walk."

The girl, in her slippers, crept to the head of the flight. There she could hear the steady, ghostly footstep from below. No other sound within the great mansion reached her ears. It was queer.

To and fro the odd step went. It apparently drew nearer, then receded—again and again.

Helen could not see any of the corridor from the top of the flight. So she began to creep down, determined to know for sure if there really was something or somebody there.

Nor was she entirely unafraid now. The mysterious sounds had got upon her nerves. Whether they were supernatural, or natural, she was determined to solve the mystery here and now.

Half-way down the stair she halted. The sound of the ghostly step was at the far end of the hall. But it would now return, and the girl could see (her eyes having become used to the dim light) more than half of the passage.

There was the usual rustling sound at the end of the passage. Then the steady "step—put" approached.



CHAPTER XVI

FORGOTTEN

From the stair-well some little light streamed up into the darkness of the ghost-walk. And into this dim radiance came a little old lady—her old-fashioned crimped hair an aureole of beautiful gray—leaning lightly on an ebony crutch, which in turn tapped the floor in accompaniment to her clicking step—

"Step—put; step—put; step—put."

Then she was out of the range of Helen's vision again. But she turned and came back—her silken skirts rustling, her crutch tapping in perfect time.

This was no ghost. Although slender—ethereal—almost bird-like in her motions—the little old lady was very human indeed. She had a pink flush in her cheeks, and her skin was as soft as velvet. Of course there were wrinkles; but they were beautiful wrinkles, Helen thought.

She wore black half-mitts of lace, and her old-fashioned gown was of delightfully soft, yet rich silk. The silk was brown—not many old ladies could have worn that shade of brown and found it becoming. Her eyes were bright—the unseen girl saw them sparkle as she turned her head, in that bird-like manner, from side to side.

She was a dear, doll-like old lady! Helen longed to hurry down the remaining steps and take her in her arms.

But, instead, she crept softly back to the head of the stairs, and slipped into her own room again. This was the mystery of the Starkweather mansion. The nightly exercise of this mysterious old lady was the foundation for the "ghost-walk." The maids of the household feared the supernatural; therefore they easily found a legend to explain the rustling step of the old lady with the crutch.

And all day long the old lady kept to her room. That room must be in the front of the house on this upper floor—shut away, it was likely, from the knowledge of most of the servants.

Mrs. Olstrom, of course, knew about the old lady—who she was—what she was. It was the housekeeper who looked after the simple wants of the mysterious occupant of the Starkweather mansion.

Helen wondered if Mr. Lawdor, the old butler, knew about the mystery? And did the Starkweathers themselves know?

The girl from the ranch was too excited and curious to go to sleep now. She had to remain right by her door, opened on a crack, and learn what would happen next.

For an hour at least she heard the steady stepping of the old lady. Then the crutch rapped out an accompaniment to her coming upstairs. She was humming softly to herself, too. Helen, crouched behind the door, distinguished the sweet, cracked voice humming a fragment of the old lullaby:

"Rock-a-by, baby, on the tree-top, When the wind blows, the cradle will rock, When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, Down will come baby——"

Thus humming, and the crutch tapping—a mere whisper of sound—the old lady rustled by Helen's door, on into the long corridor, and disappeared through some door, which closed behind her and smothered all further sound.

Helen went to bed; but she could not sleep—not at first. The mystery of the little old lady and her ghostly walk kept her eyes wide open and her brain afire for hours.

She asked question after question into the dark of the night, and only imagination answered. Some of the answers were fairly reasonable; others were as impossible as the story of Jack the Giant Killer.

Finally, however, Helen dropped asleep. She awoke at her usual hour—daybreak—and her eager mind began again asking questions about the mystery. She went down in her outdoor clothes for a morning walk, with the little old lady uppermost in her thoughts.

As usual, Mr. Lawdor was on the lookout for her. The shaky old man loved to have her that few minutes in his room in the early morning. Although he always presided over the dinner, with Gregson under him, the old butler seldom seemed to speak, or be spoken to. Helen understood that, like Mrs. Olstrom, Lawdor was a relic of the late owner—Mr. Starkweather's great-uncle's—household.

Cornelius Starkweather had been a bachelor. The mansion had descended to him from a member of the family who had been a family man. But that family had died young—wife and all—and the master had handed the old homestead over to Mr. Cornelius and had gone traveling himself—to die in a foreign land.

Once Helen had heard Lawdor murmur something about "Mr. Cornelius" and she had picked up the remainder of her information from things she had heard Mr. Starkweather and the girls say.

Now the old butler met her with an ingratiating smile and begged her to have something beside her customary coffee and roll.