"I have a lovely steak, Miss. The butcher remembers me once in a while, and he knows I am fond of a bit of tender beef. My teeth are not what they were once, you know, Miss."

"But why should I eat your nice steak?" demanded Helen, laughing at him. "My teeth are good for what the boys on the range call 'bootleg.' That's steak cut right next to the hoof!"

"Ah, but, Miss! There is so much more than I could possibly eat," he urged.

He had already turned the electricity into his grill. The ruddy steak—salted, peppered, with tiny flakes of garlic upon it—he brought from his own little icebox. The appetizing odor of the meat sharpened Helen's appetite even as she sipped the first of her coffee.

"I'll just have to eat some, I expect, Mr. Lawdor," she said. Then she had a sudden thought, and added: "Or perhaps you'd like to save this tidbit for the little old lady in the attic?"

Mr. Lawdor turned—not suddenly; he never did anything with suddenness; but it was plain she had startled him.

"Bless me, Miss—bless me—bless me——"

He trailed off in his usual shaky way; but his lips were white and he stared at Helen like an owl for a full minute. Then he added:

"Is there a lady in the attic, Miss?" And he said it in his most polite way.

"Of course there is, Mr. Lawdor; and you know it. Who is she? I am only curious."

"I—I hear the maids talking about a ghost, Miss—foolish things——"

"And I'm not foolish, Mr. Lawdor," said the Western girl, laughing shortly. "Not that way, at least. I heard her; last night I saw her. Next time I'm going to speak to her—Unless it isn't allowed."

"It—it isn't allowed, Miss," said Lawdor, speaking softly, and with a glance at the closed door of the room.

"Nobody has forbidden me to speak to her," declared Helen, boldly. "And I'm curious—mighty curious, Mr. Lawdor. Surely she is a nice old lady—there is nothing the matter with her?"

The butler touched his forehead with a shaking finger. "A little wrong there, Miss," he whispered. "But Mary Boyle is as innocent and harmless as a baby herself."

"Can't you tell me about her—who she is—why she lives up there—and all?"

"Not here, Miss."

"Why not?" demanded Helen, boldly.

"It might offend Mr. Starkweather, Miss. Not that he has anything to do with Mary Boyle. He had to take the old house with her in it."

"What do you mean, Lawdor?" gasped Helen, growing more and more amazed and—naturally—more and more curious.

The butler flopped the steak suddenly upon the sizzling hot plate and in another moment the delicious bit was before her. The old man served her as expertly as ever, but his face was working strangely.

"I couldn't tell you here, Miss. Walls have ears, they say," he whispered. "But if you'll be on the first bench beyond the Sixth Avenue entrance to Central Park at ten o'clock this morning, I will meet you there.

"Yes, Miss—the rolls. Some more butter, Miss? I hope the coffee is to your taste, Miss?"

"It is all very delicious, Lawdor," said Helen, rather weakly, and feeling somewhat confused. "I will surely be there. I shall not need to come back for the regular breakfast after having this nice bit."

Helen attracted much less attention upon her usual early morning walk this time. She was dressed in the mode, if cheaply, and she was not so self-conscious. But, in addition, she thought but little of herself or her own appearance or troubles while she walked briskly uptown.

It was of the little old woman, and her mystery, and the butler's words that she thought. She strode along to the park, and walked west until she reached the bridle-path. She had found this before, and came to see the riders as they cantered by.

How Helen longed to put on her riding clothes and get astride a lively mount and gallop up the park-way! But she feared that, in doing so, she might betray to her uncle or the girls the fact that she was not the "pauper cowgirl" they thought her to be.

She found a seat overlooking the path, at last, and rested for a while; but her mind was not upon the riders. Before ten o'clock she had walked back south, found the entrance to the park opposite Sixth Avenue, and sat down upon the bench specified by the old butler. At the stroke of the hour the old man appeared.

"You could not have walked all this way, Lawdor?" said the girl, smiling upon him. "You are not at all winded."

"No, Miss. I took the car. I am not up to such walks as you can take," and he shook his head, mumbling: "Oh, no, no, no, no——"

"And now, what can you tell me, sir?" she said, breaking in upon his dribbling speech. "I am just as curious as I can be. That dear little old lady! Why is she in uncle's house?"

"Ah, Miss! I fancy she will not be there for long, but she was an encumbrance upon it when Mr. Willets Starkweather came with his family to occupy it."

"What do you mean?" cried the girl.

"Mary Boyle served in the Starkweather family long, long ago. Before I came to valet for Mr. Cornelius, Mary Boyle had her own room and was a fixture in the house. Mr. Cornelius took her more—more philosophically, as you might say, Miss. My present master and his daughters look upon poor Mary Boyle as a nuisance. They have to allow her to remain. She is a life charge upon the estate—that, indeed, was fixed before Mr. Cornelius's time. But the present family are ashamed of her. Perhaps I ought not to say it, but it is true. They have relegated her to a suite upon the top floor, and other people have quite forgotten Mary Boyle—yes, oh, yes, indeed! Quite forgotten her—quite forgotten her——"

Then, with the aid of some questioning, Helen heard the whole sad story of Mary Boyle, who was a nurse girl in the family of the older generation of Starkweathers. It was in her arms the last baby of the family had panted his weakly little life out. She, too, had watched by the bed of the lady of the mansion, who had borne these unfortunate children only to see them die.

And Mary Boyle was one of that race who often lose their own identity in the families they serve. She had loved the lost babies as though they had been of her own flesh. She had walked the little passage at the back of the house (out of which had opened the nursery in those days) so many, many nights with one or the other of her fretful charges, that by and by she thought, at night, that she had them yet to soothe.

Mary Boyle, the weak-minded yet harmless ex-nurse, had been cherished by her old master. And in his will he had left her to the care of Mr. Cornelius, the heir. In turn she had been left a life interest in the mansion—to the extent of shelter and food and proper clothes—when Willets Starkweather became proprietor.

He could not get rid of the old lady. But, when he refurnished the house and made it over, he had banished Mary Boyle to the attic rooms. The girls were ashamed of her. She sometimes talked loudly if company was about. And always of the children she had once attended. She spoke of them as though they were still in her care, and told how she had walked the hall with one, or the other, of her dead and gone treasures the very night before!

For it was found necessary to allow Mary Boyle to have the freedom of that short corridor on the chamber floor late at night. Otherwise she would not remain secluded in her own rooms at the top of the house during the daytime.

As the lower servants came and went, finally only Mrs. Olstrom and Mr. Lawdor knew about the old lady, save the family. And Mr. Starkweather impressed it upon the minds of both these employes that he did not wish the old lady discussed below stairs.

So the story had risen that the house was haunted. The legend of the "ghost walk" was established. And Mary Boyle lived out her lonely life, with nobody to speak to save the housekeeper, who saw her daily; Mr. Lawdor, who climbed to her rooms perhaps once each week, and Mr. Starkweather himself, who saw and reported upon her case to his fellow trustees each month.

It was, to Helen, an unpleasant story. It threw a light on the characters of her uncle and cousins which did not enhance her admiration of them, to say the least. She had found them unkind, purse-proud heretofore; but to her generous soul their treatment of the little old woman, who must be but a small charge upon the estate, seemed far more blameworthy than their treatment of herself.

The story of the old butler made Helen quiver with indignation. It was like keeping the old lady in jail—this shutting her away into the attic of the great house. The Western girl went back to Madison Avenue (she walked, but the old butler rode) with a thought in her mind that she was not quite sure was a wise one. Yet she had nobody to discuss her idea with—nobody whom she wished to take into her confidence.

There were two lonely and neglected people in that fine mansion. She, herself, was one. The old nurse, Mary Boyle, was the other. And Helen felt a strong desire to see and talk with her fellow-sufferer.



CHAPTER XVII

A DISTINCT SHOCK

That evening when Mr. Starkweather came home, he handed Helen a sealed letter.

"I have ascertained," the gentleman said, in his most pompous way, "that Mr. Fenwick Grimes is in town. He has recently returned from a tour of the West, where he has several mining interests. You will find his address on that envelope. Give the letter to him. It will serve to introduce you."

He watched her closely while he said this, but did not appear to do so. Helen thanked him with some warmth.

"This is very good of you, Uncle Starkweather—especially when I know you do not approve."

"Ahem! Sleeping dogs are much better left alone. To stir a puddle is only to agitate the mud. This old business would much better be forgotten. You know all that there is to be known about the unfortunate affair, I am quite sure."

"I cannot believe that, Uncle," Helen replied. "Had you seen how my dear father worried about it when he was dying——"

Mr. Starkweather could look at her no longer—not even askance. He shook his head and murmured some commonplace, sympathetic phrase. But it did not seem genuine to his niece.

She knew very well that Mr. Starkweather had no real sympathy for her; nor did he care a particle about her father's death. But she tucked the letter into her pocket and went her way.

As she passed through the upstairs corridor Flossie was entering one of the drawing-rooms, and she caught her cousin by the hand. Flossie had been distinctly nicer to Helen—in private—since the latter had helped her with the algebra problems.

"Come on in, Helen. Belle's just pouring tea. Don't you want some?" said the youngest Starkweather girl.

It was in Helen's mind to excuse herself. Yet she was naturally too kindly to refuse to accept an advance like this. And she, like Flossie, had no idea that there was anybody in the drawing-room save Belle and Hortense.

In they marched—and there were three young ladies—friends of Belle—sipping tea and eating macaroons by the log fire, for the evening was drawing in cold.

"Goodness me!" ejaculated Belle.

"Well, I never!" gasped Hortense. "Have you got to butt in, Floss?"

"We want some tea, too," said the younger girl, boldly, angered by her sisters' manner.

"You'd better have it in the nursery," yawned Hortense. "This is no place for kids in the bread-and-butter stage of growth."

"Oh, is that so?" cried Flossie. "Helen and I are not kids—distinctly not! I hope I know my way about a bit—and as for Helen," she added, with a wicked grin, knowing that the speech would annoy her sisters, "Helen can shoot, and rope steers, and break ponies to saddle, and all that. She told me so the other evening. Isn't that right, Cousin Helen?"

"Why, your cousin must be quite a wonderful girl," said Miss Van Ramsden, one of the visitors, to Flossie. "Introduce me; won't you, Flossie?"

Belle was furious; and Hortense would have been, too, only she was too languid to feel such an emotion. Flossie proceeded to introduce Helen to the three visitors—all of whom chanced to be young ladies whom Belle was striving her best to cultivate.

And before Flossie and Helen had swallowed their tea, which Belle gave them ungraciously, Gregson announced a bevy of other girls, until quite a dozen gaily dressed and chattering misses were gathered before the fire.

At first Helen had merely bowed to the girls to whom she was introduced. She had meant to drink her tea quietly and excuse herself. She did not wish now to display a rude manner before Belle's guests; but her oldest cousin seemed determined to rouse animosity in her soul.

"Yes," she said, "Helen is paying us a little visit—a very brief one. She is not at all used to our ways. In fact, Indian squaws and what-do-you call-'ems—Greasers—are about all the people she sees out her way."

"Is that so?" cried Miss Van Ramsden. "It must be a perfectly charming country. Come and sit down by me, Miss Morrell, and tell me about it."

Indeed, at the moment, there was only one vacant chair handy, and that was beside Miss Van Ramsden. So Helen took it and immediately the young lady began to ask questions about Montana and the life Helen had lived there.

Really, the young society woman was not offensive; the questions were kindly meant. But Helen saw that Belle was furious and she began to take a wicked delight in expatiating upon her home and her own outdoor accomplishments.

When she told Miss Van Ramsden how she and her cowboy friends rode after jack-rabbits and roped them—if they could!—and shot antelope from the saddle, and that the boys sometimes attacked a mountain lion with nothing but their lariats, Miss Van Ramsden burst out with:

"Why, that's perfectly grand! What fun you must have! Do hear her, girls! Why, what we do is tame and insipid beside things that happen out there in Montana every day."

"Oh, don't bother about her, May!" cried Belle. "Come on and let's plan what we'll do Saturday if we go to the Nassau links."

"Listen here!" cried Miss Van Ramsden, eagerly. "Golf can wait. We can always golf. But your cousin tells the very bulliest stories. Go on, Miss Morrell. Tell some more."

"Do, do!" begged some of the other girls, drawing their chairs nearer.

Helen was not a little embarrassed. She would have been glad to withdraw from the party. But then she saw the looks exchanged between Belle and Hortense, and they fathered a wicked desire in the Western girl's heart to give her proud cousins just what they were looking for.

She began, almost unconsciously, to stretch her legs out in a mannish style, and drop into the drawl of the range.

"Coyote running is about as good fun as we have," she told Miss Van Ramsden in answer to a question. "Yes, they're cowardly critters; but they can run like a streak o' greased lightning—yes-sir-ree-bob!" Then she began to laugh a little. "I remember once when I was a kid, that I got fooled about coyotes."

"I'd like to know what you are now," drawled Hortense, trying to draw attention from her cousin, who was becoming altogether too popular. "And you should know that children are better seen than heard."

"Let's see," said Helen, quickly, "our birthdays are in the same month; aren't they, 'Tense? I believe mother used to tell me so."

"Oh, never mind your birthdays," urged Miss Van Ramsden, while some of the other girls smiled at the repartee. "Let's hear about your adventure with the coyote, Miss Morrell."

"Why, ye see," said Helen, "it wasn't much. I was just a kid, as I say—mebbe ten year old. Dad had given me a light rifle—just a twenty-two, you know—to learn to shoot with. And Big Hen Billings——"

"Doesn't that sound just like those dear Western plays?" gasped one young lady. "You know—'The Squaw Man of the Golden West,' or 'Missouri,' or——"

"Hold on! You're getting your titles mixed, Lettie," cried Miss Van Ramsden. "Do let Miss Morrell tell it."

"To give that child the center of the stage!" snapped Hortense, to Belle.

"I could shake Flossie for bringing her in here," returned the oldest Starkweather girl, quite as angrily.

"Tell us about your friend, Big Hen Billings," drawled another visitor. "He does sound so romantic!"

Helen almost giggled. To consider the giant foreman of Sunset Ranch a romantic type was certainly "going some." She had the wicked thought that she would have given a large sum of money, right then and there, to have had Big Hen announced by Gregson and ushered into the presence of this group of city girls.

"Well," continued Helen, thus urged, "father had given me a little rifle and Big Hen gave me a maverick——"

"What's that?" demanded Flossie.

"Well, in this case," explained Helen, "it was an orphaned calf. Sometimes they're strays that haven't been branded. But in this case a bear had killed the calf's mother in a coulee. She had tried to fight Mr. Bear, of course, or he never would have killed her at that time of year. Bears aren't dangerous unless they're hungry."

"My! but they look dangerous enough—at the zoo," observed Flossie.

"I tell ye," said Helen, reflectively, "that was a pretty calf. And I was little, and I hated to hear them blat when the boys burned them——"

"Burned them! Burned little calves! How cruel! What for?"

These were some of the excited comments. And in spite of Belle and Hortense, most of the visitors were now interested in the Western girl's narration.

"They have to brand 'em, you see," explained Helen. "Otherwise we never could pick our cattle out from other herds at the round-up. You see, on the ranges—even the fenced ranges—cattle from several ranches often get mixed up. Our brand is the Link-A. Our ranch was known, in the old days, as the 'Link-A.' It's only late years that we got to calling it Sunset Ranch."

"Sunset Ranch!" cried Miss Van Ramsden, quickly. "Haven't I heard something about that ranch? Isn't it one of the big, big cattle and horse-breeding ranches?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Helen, slowly, fearing that she had unwittingly got into a blind alley of conversation.

"And your father owns that ranch?" cried Miss Van Ramsden.

"My—my father is dead," said Helen. "I am an orphan."

"Oh, dear me! I am so sorry," murmured the wealthy young lady.

But here Belle broke in, rather scornfully:

"The child means that her father worked on that ranch. She has lived there all her life. Quite a rude place, I fawncy."

Helen's eyes snapped. "Yes. He worked there," she admitted, which was true enough, for nobody could honestly have called Prince Morrell a sluggard.

"He was—what you call it—a cowpuncher, I believe," whispered Belle, in an aside.

If Helen heard she made no sign, but went on with her story.

"You see, it was such a pretty calf," she repeated. "It had big blue eyes at first—calves often do. And it was all sleek and brown, and it played so cunning. Of course, its mother being dead, I had a lot of trouble with it at first. I brought it up by hand.

"And I tied a broad pink ribbon around its neck, with a big bow at the back. When it slipped around under its neck Bozie would somehow get the end of the ribbon in its mouth, and chew, and chew on it till it was nothing but pulp."

She laughed reminiscently, and the others, watching her pretty face in the firelight, smiled too.

"So you called it Bozie?" asked Miss Van Ramsden.

"Yes. And it followed me everywhere. If I went out to try and shoot plover or whistlers with my little rifle, there was Bozie tagging after me. So, you see when it came calf-branding time, I hid Bozie."

"You hid it? How?" demanded Flossie. "Seems to me a calf would be a big thing to hide."

"I didn't hide it under my bed," laughed Helen. "No, sir! I took it out to a far distant coulee where I used to go to play—a long way from the bunk-house—and I hitched Bozie to a stub of a tree where there was nice, short, sweet grass for him.

"I hitched him in the morning, for the branding fires were going to be built right after dinner. But I had to show up at dinner—sure. The whole gang would have been out hunting me if I didn't report for meals."

"Yes. I presume you ran perfectly wild," sighed Hortense, trying to look as though she were sorry for this half-savage little cousin from the "wild and woolly."

"Oh, very wild indeed," drawled Helen. "And after dinner I raced back to the coulee to see that Bozie was all right. I took my rifle along so the boys would think I'd gone hunting and wouldn't tell father.

"I'd heard coyotes barking, as I thought, all the forenoon. And when I came to the hollow, there was Bozie running around and around his stub, and getting all tangled up, blatting his heart out, while two big old coyotes (or so I thought they were) circled around him.

"They ran a little way when they saw me coming. Coyotes sometimes will kill calves. But I had never seen one before that wouldn't hunt the tall pines when they saw me coming.

"Crackey, those two were big fellers! I'd seen big coyotes, but never none like them two gray fellers. And they snarled at me when I made out to chase 'em—me wavin' my arms and hollerin' like a Piute buck. I never had seen coyotes like them before, and it throwed a scare into me—it sure did!

"And Bozie was so scared that he helped to scare me. I dropped my gun and started to untangle him. And when I got him loose he acted like all possessed!



"He wanted to run wild," proceeded Helen. "He yanked me over the ground at a great rate. And all the time those two gray fellers was sneakin' up behind me. Crackey, but I got scared!

"A calf is awful strong—'specially when it's scared. You don't know! I had to leave go of either the rope, or the gun, and somehow," and Helen smiled suddenly into Miss Van Ramsden's face—who understood—"somehow I felt like I'd better hang onter the gun."

"They weren't coyotes!" exclaimed Miss Van Ramsden.

"No. They was wolves—real old, gray, timber-wolves. We hadn't been bothered by them for years. Two of 'em, working together, would pull down a full-grown cow, let alone a little bit of a calf and a little bit of a gal," said Helen.

"O-o-o!" squealed the excited Flossie. "But they didn't?"

"I'm here to tell the tale," returned her cousin, laughing outright. "Bozie broke away from me, and the wolves leaped after him—full chase. I knelt right down——"

"And prayed!" gasped Flossie. "I should think you would!"

"I did pray—yes, ma'am! I prayed that the bullet would go true. But I knelt down to steady my aim," said Helen, chuckling again. "And I broke the back of one of them wolves with my first shot. That was wonderful luck—with a twenty-two rifle. The bullet's only a tiny thing.

"But I bowled Mr. Wolf over, and then I ran after the other one and the blatting Bozie. Bozie dodged the wolf somehow and came circling back at me, his tail flirting in the air, coming in stiff-legged jumps as a calf does, and searching his soul for sounds to tell how scart he was!

"I'd pushed another cartridge into my gun. But when Bozie came he bowled me over—flat on my back. Then the wolf made a leap, and I saw his light-gray underbody right over my head as he flashed after poor Bozie.

"I jest let go with the gun! Crackey! I didn't have time to shoulder it, and it kicked and hit me in the nose and made my nose bleed awful. I was 'all in,' too, and I thought the wolf was going to eat Bozie, and then mebbe me, and I set up to bawl so't Big Hen heard me farther than he could have heard my little rifle.

"Big Hen was always expectin' me to get inter some kind of trouble, and he come tearin' along lookin' for me. And there I was, rolling in the grass an' bawling, the second wolf kicking his life out with the blood pumping from his chest, not three yards away from me, and Bozie streakin' it acrost the hill, his tail so stiff with fright you could ha' hung yer hat on it!"

"Isn't that perfectly grand!" cried Miss Van Ramsden, seizing Helen by the shoulders when she had finished and kissing her on both cheeks. "And you only ten years old?"

"But, you see," said Helen, more quietly, "we are brought up that way in Montana. We would die a thousand deaths if we were taught to be afraid of anything on four legs."

"It must be an exceedingly crude country," remarked Hortense, her nose tip-tilted.

"Shocking!" agreed Belle.

"I'd like to go there," announced Flossie, suddenly. "I think it must be fine."

"Quite right," agreed Miss Van Ramsden.

The older Starkweather girls could not go against their most influential caller. They were only too glad to have the Van Ramsden girl come to see them. But while the group were discussing Helen's story, the girl from Sunset Ranch stole away and went up to her room.

She had not meant to tell about her life in the West—not in just this way. She had tried to talk about as her cousins expected her to, when once she got into the story; but its effect upon the visitors had not been just what either the Starkweather girls, or Helen herself, had expected.

She saw that she was much out of the good graces of Belle and Hortense at dinner; they hardly spoke to her. But Flossie seemed to delight in rubbing her sisters against the grain.

"Oh, Pa," she cried, "when Helen goes home, let me go with her; will you? I'd just love to be on a ranch for a while—I know I should! And I do need a vacation."

"Nonsense, Floss!" gasped Hortense.

"You are a perfectly vulgar little thing," declared Belle. "I don't know where you get such low tastes."

Mr. Starkweather looked at his youngest daughter in amazement. "How very ridiculous," he said. "Ahem! You do not know what you ask, Flossie."

"Oh! I never can have anything I want," whined Miss Flossie. "And it must be great fun out on that ranch. You ought to hear Helen tell about it, Pa."

"Ahem! I have no interest in such things," said her father, sternly. "Nor should you. No well conducted and well brought up girl would wish to live among such rude surroundings."

"Very true, Pa," sighed Hortense, shrugging her shoulders.

"You are a very common little thing, with very common tastes, Floss," admonished her oldest sister.

Now, all this was whipping Helen over Flossie's shoulders. The latter grinned wickedly; but Helen felt hurt. These people were determined to consider Sunset Ranch an utterly uncivilized place, and her associates there beneath contempt.

The following morning she set out to find the address upon the letter Mr. Starkweather had given to her. Whether she should present this letter to Mr. Grimes at once, Helen was not sure. It might be that she would wish to get acquainted with him before he knew her identity. Her expectations were very vague, at best; and yet she had hope.

She hoped that through this old-time partner of her father's she might pick up some clue to the truth about the lost money. The firm of Grimes & Morrell had been on the point of paying several heavy bills and notes. The money for this purpose, as well as the working capital of the firm, had been in two banks. Either partner could draw checks against these accounts.

When the deposits in both banks had been withdrawn it had been done by checks for each complete balance being presented at the teller's window of both banks. And the tellers were quite sure that the person presenting the checks was Prince Morrell.

In the rush of business, however, neither teller had been positive of this. Of course, it might have been the bookkeeper, or Mr. Grimes, who had got the money on the checks. However it might be, the money disappeared; there was none with which to pay the creditors or to continue the business of the firm.

Fenwick Grimes had been a sufferer; Willets Starkweather had been a sufferer. What Allen Chesterton, the bookkeeper, had been, it was hard to say. He had walked out of the office of the firm and had never come back. Likewise after a few days of worry and disturbance, Prince Morrell had done the same.

At least, the general public presumed that Mr. Morrell had run away without leaving any clue. It looked as though the senior partner and the bookkeeper were in league.

But public interest in the mystery had soon died out. Only the creditors remembered. After ten years they were pleasantly reminded of the wreck of the firm of Grimes & Morrell by the receipt of their lost money, with interest compounded to date. The lawyer that had come on from the West to make the settlement for Prince Morrell bound the creditors to secrecy. The bankruptcy court had long since absolved Fenwick Grimes from responsibility for the debts of the old firm. Neither he nor Mr. Starkweather had to know that the partner who ran away had legally cleared his name.

But there was something more. The suspicion against Prince Morrell had burdened the cattle king's mind and heart when he died. And his little daughter felt it to be her sacred duty to try, at least, to uncover that old mystery and to prove to the world that her father had been guiltless.

Mr. Grimes lived in an old house in a rather shabby old street just off Washington Square. Helen asked Mr. Lawdor how to find the place, and she rode downtown upon a Fifth Avenue 'bus.

The house was a half-business, half-studio building; and Mr. Grimes's name—graven on a small brass plate—was upon a door in the lower hall. In fact, Mr. Grimes, and his clerk, occupied this lower floor, the gentleman owning the building, which he was holding for a rise in real estate values in that neighborhood.

The clerk, a sharp-looking young man with a pen behind his ear, answered Helen's somewhat timid knock. He looked her over severely before he even offered to admit her, asking:

"What's your business, please?"

"I came to see Mr. Grimes, sir."

"By appointment?"

"No-o, sir. But——"

"He is very busy. He seldom sees anybody save by appointment. Are—are you acquainted with him?"

"No, sir. But my business is important."

"To you, perhaps," said the clerk, with a sneering smile. "But if it isn't important to him I shall catch it for letting you in. What is it?"

"It is business that I can tell to nobody except Mr. Grimes. Not in detail. But I can say this much: It concerns a time when Mr. Grimes was in business with another man—sixteen years or more ago and I have come—come from his old partner."

"Humph!" said the clerk. "A begging interview? For, if so, take my advice—don't try it. It would be no use. Mr. Grimes never gives anything away. He wouldn't even bait a rat-trap with cheese-parings."

"I have not come here to beg money of Mr. Grimes," said Helen, drawing herself up.

"Well, you can come in and wait. Perhaps he'll see you."

This had all been said very low in the public hall, the clerk holding the door jealously shut behind him. Now he opened it slowly and let her enter a large room, with old and dusty furniture set about it, and the clerk's own desk far back, by another door—which latter he guarded against all intrusion. Behind that door, of course, was the man she had come to see.

But as Helen turned to take a seat on the couch which the clerk indicated with a gesture of his pen, she suddenly discovered that she was not the only person waiting in the room. In a decrepit armchair by one of the front windows, and reading the morning paper, with his wig pushed back upon his bald brow, was the queer old gentleman with whom she had ridden across the continent when she had come to New York.

The discovery of this acquaintance here in Mr. Grimes's office gave Helen a distinct shock.



CHAPTER XVIII

PROBING FOR FACTS

Helen sat down quickly and stared across the room at the queer old man. The latter at first seemed to pay her no attention. But finally she saw that he was skillfully "taking stock" of her from behind the shelter of the printed sheet.

The Western girl was more direct than that. She got up and walked across to him. The clerk uttered a very loud "Ahem!" as though to warn her to drop her intention; but Helen said coolly:

"Don't you remember me, sir?"

"Ha! I believe it is the little girl who came from the coast with me last week," said the man.

"Not from the coast; from Montana," corrected Helen.

"But you are dressed differently now and I was not sure," he said. "How have you been?"

"Very well, I thank you. And you, sir?"

"Well. Very. But I did not expect to see you again—er—here."

"No, sir. And you are waiting to see Mr. Grimes, too?"

"Er—something like that," admitted the old man.

Helen eyed him thoughtfully. She had already glanced covertly once or twice at the clerk across the room. She was quite bright enough to see between the rungs of a ladder.

"You are Mr. Grimes," she said, bluntly, looking again at the old man, who was adjusting his wig.

He looked up at her slily, his avaricious little eyes twinkling as they had aboard the train when he had looked over her shoulder and caught her counting her money.

"You're a very smart little girl," he said, with a short laugh. "What have you come to see me about? Do you think of investing some of your money in mining stocks?"

"No," said Helen. "I have no money to invest."

"Humph. Did you find your folks?" he asked, turning the subject quickly.

"Yes, sir."

"What's the matter with you, then? What do you want?"

"You are Mr. Grimes?" she pursued, to make sure.

"Well, I don't deny it."

"I have come to talk to you about—about Prince Morrell," she said, in a very low voice so that the clerk could not hear.

"Who?" gasped the man, falling back in his chair. Evidently Helen had startled him.

"Prince Morrell," she replied.

"What are you to Prince Morrell?" demanded the man.

"I am his daughter. He is dead. I have come here to talk with you about the time—the time he left New York," said the girl from Sunset Ranch, hesitatingly.

Mr. Grimes stared at her, with his wig still awry, for some moments; then the color began to come back into his face. Helen had not realized before that he had turned pale.

"You come into my office," he snapped, jumping up briskly. "I'll get to the bottom of this!"

His movements were so very abrupt and he looked at her so strangely that, to tell the truth, the girl from Sunset Ranch was a bit frightened. She trailed along behind him, however, with only a hesitating step, passing the wondering clerk, and heard the lock of the door of the inner office snap behind her as Mr. Grimes shut it.

He drew heavy curtains over the door, too. The place was a gloomy apartment until he turned on the electric light over a desk table. She saw that there were curtains at all the windows, and at the other door, too.

"Come here," he said, beckoning her to the desk, and to a chair that stood by it, and still speaking softly. "We will not be overheard here. Now! Tell me what you mean by coming to me in this way?"

He shot such an ugly look at her that Helen was again startled.

"What do you mean?" she returned, hiding her real emotion. "I have come to ask some questions. Why shouldn't I?"

"You say Prince Morrell is dead?"

"Yes, sir. Nearly two months, now."

"Who sent you, then?"

"Sent me to you?" queried Helen, in wonder.

"Yes. Somebody must have sent you," said Mr. Grimes, watching her with his little eyes, in which there seemed to burn a very baleful look.

"You are mistaken. Nobody sent me," said Helen, recovering a measure of her courage. She believed that this strange man was a coward. But why should he be afraid of her?

"You came clear across this continent to interview me about—about something that is gone and forgotten—almost before you were born?"

"It isn't forgotten," returned Helen, meaningly. "Such things are never forgotten. My father said so."

"But it's no use hauling everything to the surface of the pool again," grumbled Mr. Grimes.

"That is about what Uncle Starkweather says; but I do not feel that way," said Helen, slowly.

"Ha! Starkweather! Of course he's in it. I might have known," muttered the old man. "So he sent you to me?"

"No, sir. He objected to my coming," declared Helen, quite convinced now that she should not deliver her uncle's letter.

"The Starkweathers are the people you came East to visit?"

"Yes, sir."

"And how did they receive you in their fine Madison Avenue mansion?" queried Mr. Grimes, looking up at her slily again.

"Just as you know they did," returned Helen, briefly.

"Ha! How's that? And you with all that——"

He halted and—for a moment—had the grace to blush. He saw that she read his mind.

"They do not know that I have some money for emergencies," said Helen, coolly.

"Ho, ho!" chuckled Mr. Grimes, suddenly.

"So they consider you a pauper relative from the West?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ho, ho!" he laughed again, and rubbed his hands. "How did Prince leave you fixed?"

"I—I have something beside the money you saw me counting," she told him, bluntly.

"And Willets Starkweather doesn't know it?"

"He has never asked me if I were in funds."

"I bet you!" cackled Grimes, at last giving way to a spasm of mirth which, Helen thought, was not nice to look upon. "And how does he fancy having you in his family?"

"He does not like it. Neither do his daughters. And one of their reasons is because people will ask questions about Prince Morrell's daughter. They are afraid their friends will bring up father's old trouble," continued Helen, her voice quivering. "So that is why, Mr. Grime's, I am determined to know the truth about it."

"The truth? What do you mean?" snarled Grimes, suddenly starting out of his chair.

"Why, sir," said Helen, amazed, "dad told me all about it when he was dying. All he knew. But he said by this time surely the truth of the matter must have come to light. I want to clear his name——"

"How are you going to do that?" demanded Mr. Grimes.

"I hope you will help me—if you can, sir," she said, pleadingly.

"How can I help more now than I could at the time he was charged with the crime?"

"I do not know. Perhaps you can't. Perhaps Uncle Starkweather cannot, either. But, it seems to me, if anything had been heard from that bookkeeper——"

"Allen Chesterton?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well! I don't know how you are going to prove it, but I have always believed Allen was guilty," declared Mr. Grimes, nodding his head vigorously, and still watching her face.

"Oh, have you, Mr. Grimes?" cried the girl, eagerly, clasping her hands. "You have always believed it?"

"Quite so. Evidence was against my old partner—yes. But it wasn't very direct. And then—what became of Allen? Why did he run away?"

"That is what other people said about father," said Helen, doubtfully. "It did not make him guilty, but it made him look guilty. The same can be said of the bookkeeper."

"But how can you go farther than that?" asked Mr. Grimes. "It's too long ago for the facts to be brought out. We can have our suspicions. We might even publish our suspicions. Let us get something in the papers—I can do it," and he nodded, decisively, "stating that facts recently brought to light seemed to prove conclusively that Prince Morrell, once accused of embezzlement of the bank accounts of the firm of Grimes & Morrell, was guiltless of that crime. And we will state that the surviving partner of the firm is convinced that the only person guilty of that embezzlement was one Allen Chesterton, who was the firm's bookkeeper. How about that? Wouldn't that fill the bill?" asked Mr. Grimes, rubbing his hands together.

"If we had such an article published in the papers and circulated among his old friends, wouldn't that satisfy you, my dear? Then you would do no more of this foolish probing for facts that cannot possibly be reached—eh? What do you say, Helen Morrell? Isn't that a famous idea?"

But the girl from Sunset Ranch was, for the moment, speechless. For a second time, it seemed to her, she was being bribed to make no serious investigation of the evidence connected with her father's old trouble. Both Uncle Starkweather and this old man seemed to desire to head her off!



CHAPTER XIX

"JONES"

"Isn't that a famous idea?" demanded Mr. Grimes, for the second time.

"I—I am not so sure, sir," Helen stammered.

"Why, of course it is!" he cried, smiting the desk before him with the flat of his palm. "Don't you see that your father's name will be cleared of all doubt? And quite right, too! He never was guilty."

"It makes me quite happy to hear you say so," said the girl, wiping her eyes. "But how about the bookkeeper?"

"Who—Allen?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, we couldn't find him now. If he kept hidden then, when there was a hue and cry out for him, what chance would there be of finding him after seventeen years? Oh, no! Allen can't be found. And, even if he could, I doubt but the thing is outlawed. I don't know that the authorities would take it up. And I am pretty sure the creditors of the old firm would not."

"That is not what I mean," said Helen, softly. "But suppose we accuse this bookkeeper—and he is not guilty, either?"

"Well! Is that any great odds? Nobody knows where he is——"

"But suppose he should reappear," persisted Helen. "Suppose somebody who loved him—a daughter, perhaps, as I am the daughter of Prince Morrell—with just as great a desire to clear her father's name as I have to clear mine—— Suppose such a person should appear determined to prove Mr. Chesterton not guilty, too?"

"Ha, but we've beat 'em to it—don't you see?" demanded Mr. Grimes, heartlessly.

"Oh, sir! I could not take such an apparent victory at such a cost!" cried Helen, wiping her eyes again. "You say you believe Allen Chesterton was guilty instead of father. But you put forward no evidence—no more than the mere suspicion that cursed poor dad. No, no, sir! To claim new evidence, but to show no new evidence, is not enough. I must find out for sure just who stole that money. That is what dad himself said would be the only way in which his name could be cleared."

"Nonsense, girl!" ejaculated Fenwick Grimes, scowling again.

"I am sorry to go against both your wishes and Uncle Starkweather's," said Helen, slowly. "But I want the truth! I can't be satisfied with anything but the truth about this whole unfortunate business.

"It made poor dad very unhappy when he was dying. It troubled my poor mother—so he said—all her life out there in Montana. I want to know where the money went—who got it—all about it. Then I can prove to people that it was not my father who committed the crime."

"This is a very quixotic thing you have undertaken, my girl," remarked Mr. Grimes, with a sudden change in his manner.

"I hope not. I hope I shall learn the truth."

"How?"

He shot the question at her as from a gun. His face had grown very grim and his sly little eyes gleamed threateningly. More than ever did Helen dislike and fear this man. The avaricious light in his eyes as he noted the money she carried on the train, had first warned her against him. Now, when she knew so much more about him, and how he was immediately connected with her father's old trouble, Helen feared him all the more.

Because of his love of money alone, she could not trust him. And he had suggested something which was, upon the face of it, dishonest and unfair. She rose from her seat and shook her head slowly.

"I do not know how," Helen said, sadly. "But I hope something may turn up to help me. I understand that you have never known anything about Allen Chesterton since he ran away?"

"Not a thing," declared Mr. Grimes, shortly, rising as well.

"It is through him I hoped to find the truth," she murmured.

"So you won't accept my help?" growled Mr. Grimes.

"Not—not the kind you offer. It—it wouldn't be right," Helen replied.

"Very well, then!" snapped the man, and opened the door into the outer office. As he ushered her into the other room the outer door opened and a shabby man poked his head and shoulders in at the door.

"I say!" he said, quaveringly. "Is Mr. Grimes——"

"Get out of here, you old ruffian!" cried Fenwick Grimes, flying into a sudden passion. "Of course, you'd got to come around to-day!"

"I only wanted to say, Mr. Grimes——"

"Out of my sight!" roared Grimes. "Here, Leggett!" to his clerk; "give Jones a dollar and let him go. I can't see him now."

"Jones, sir?" queried the clerk, seemingly somewhat staggered, and looking from his employer to the old scarecrow in the doorway.

"Yes, sir!" snarled Mr. Grimes. "I said Jones, sir—Jones, Jones, Jones! Do you understand plain English, Mr. Leggett? Take that dollar on the desk and give it into the hands of Jones there at the door. And then oblige me by kicking him down the steps if he doesn't move fast enough."

Leggett moved rapidly himself after this. He seemed to catch his employer's real meaning, and he grabbed the dollar and chased the beggar out into the hall. Grimes, meanwhile, held Helen back a bit. But he had nothing of any consequence to say.

Finally she bade him good-morning and went out of the office. She had not given him Uncle Starkweather's letter. Somehow, she thought it best not to do so. If she had been doubtful of the sincerity of her uncle when she broached the subject nearest her heart, she had been much more suspicious of Fenwick Grimes.

She walked composedly enough out of the building; but it was hard work to keep back the tears. It did seem such a great task for a mere girl to attempt! And nobody would help her. She had nobody in whom to confide—nobody with whom she might discuss the mystery.

And when she told herself this her mind naturally flashed to the only real friend she had made in New York—Sadie Goronsky. Helen had looked up a map of the city the evening before in her uncle's library, and she had marked the streets intervening between this place where she had interviewed her father's old partner, and Madison Street on the East Side.

She had ridden downtown to Washington Arch; so she felt equal to the walk across town and down the Bowery to the busy street where Sadie plied her peculiar trade.

She crossed the Square and went through West Broadway to Bleecker Street and turned east on that busy and interesting thoroughfare. Suddenly, right ahead of her, she beheld the shabby brown hat and wrinkled coat of the old man who had stuck his head in at the door of Mr. Grimes's office, and so disturbed the equilibrium of that individual.

Here was "Jones." At first Helen thought him to be under the influence of drink. Then she saw that the man's erratic actions must be the result of some physical or mental disability.

The old man could not walk in a straight line; but he tacked from one side of the walk to the other, taking long "slants" across the walk, first touching the iron balustrade of a step on one hand, and then bringing up at a post on the edge of the curb.

He seemed to mutter all the time to himself, too; but what he said, or whether it was sense, or nonsense, Helen (although she walked near him) could not make out. She did not wish to offend the old man; yet he seemed so helpless and peculiar that for several blocks she trailed him (as he seemed to be going her way), fearing that he would get into some trouble.

At the busy crossings Helen was really worried. The man first started, then dodged back, scouted up and down the way, seemed undecided, looked all around as though for help, and then, at the very worst time, when the vehicles in the street were the most numerous, he darted across, escaping death and destruction half a dozen times between curb and curb.

But somehow the angel that directs the destinies of foolish people who cross busy city streets, shielded him from harm, and Helen finally lost him as he turned down one of the main stems of the town while she kept on into the heart of the East Side.

And to Helen Morrell, the very "heart of the East Side" was right in the Goronsky flat on Madison Street. She had been comparing that home at the same number on Madison Street with that her uncle's house boasted on Madison Avenue, with the latter mansion. The Goronsky tenement was a home, for love and contentment dwelt there; the stately Starkweather dwelling housed too many warring factions to be a real home.

Helen came, at length, to Madison Street. She had timed her coming so as to reach Jacob Finkelstein's shop just about the time Sadie would be going to dinner.

"Miss Helen! Ain't I glad to see you?" cried Sadie. "Is there anything the matter with the dress, yet?"

"No, Miss Sadie. I was downtown and thought I would ask you to go to dinner with me. I went with you yesterday."

"O-oo my! I don't know," said Sadie, shaking her head. "I bet you'd like to come home with me instead—no?"

"I would like to. But it would not be right for me to accept your hospitality and never return it," said Helen.

"Chee! you must 'a' had a legacy," laughed Sadie.

"I—I have a little more money than I had yesterday," admitted Helen, which was true, for she had taken some out of the wallet in the trunk before she left her uncle's house.

"Well, when you swells feel like spendin' there ain't no stoppin' youse, I suppose," declared Sadie. "Do you wanter fly real high?"

"I guess we can afford a real nice dinner," said Helen, smiling.

"Are you good for as high as thirty-fi' cents apiece?" demanded Sadie.

"Yes."

"Chee! Then I can take you to a stylish place where we can get a swell feed at noon, for that. It's up on Grand Street. All the buyers and department store heads go there with the wholesale salesmen for lunch. Wait till I git me hat!" and away Sadie shot, up the tenement house stairs, so fast that her little feet, bound by the tight skirt she wore, seemed fairly to twinkle.

Helen had but a few moments to wait on the sidewalk; yet within that short time something happened to change the entire current of the day's adventures. She heard some boys shouting from the direction of the Bowery; there was a crowd crossing the street diagonally; she watched it with some apprehension at first, for it came right along the sidewalk toward her.

"Hi, fellers! See de Lurcher! Here comes de Lurcher!" yelled one ribald youth, who leaped on the stoop to which Helen had retreated the better to see over the heads of the crowd at the person who was the core of it.

And then Helen, in no little amazement, saw that this individual was none other than the man whom she had seen driven out of Fenwick Grimes's office. A gang of hoodlums surrounded him. They jeered at him, tore at his ragged clothes, hooted, and otherwise nagged the poor old fellow.

At every halt he made they pressed closer upon the "Lurcher." It was easy to see why he had been given that name. He was probably an old inhabitant of the neighborhood, and his lurching from side to side of the walk had suggested the nickname to some local wit.

Just as he steered for the rail of the step on which Helen stood, half fearful, and reached it, Sadie Goronsky came bounding out of the house. Instantly she took a hand—and as usual a master hand—in the affair.

"What you doin' to that old man, you Izzy Strefonifsky? And, Freddie Bloom, you stop or I'll tell your mommer! Ike, let him alone, or I'll make your ears tingle myself—I can do it, too!"

Sadie charged as she commanded. The hoodlums scattered—some laughing, some not so easily intimidated. But the old man was clinging to the rail and muttering over and over to himself:

"They got my dollar—they got my dollar."

"What's that?" cried Sadie, coming back after chasing the last of the boys off the block. "What's the matter, Mr. Lurcher?"

"My dollar—they got my dollar," muttered the old man.

"Oh, dear!" whispered Helen. "And perhaps it was all he had."

"You can bet it was," said Sadie, angrily. "The likes of him wouldn't likely have two dollars all at once! I'd like to scalp those imps! That I would!"

The old man, paying little attention to the two girls, but still muttering about his loss, lurched away on his erratic course homeward.

"Chee!" said Sadie. "Ain't that tough luck? He lives right around the corner, all alone. And he's just as poor as he can be. I don't know what his real name is. But the boys guy him sumpin' fierce! Ain't it mean?"

"It certainly is," agreed Helen.

"Say!" said Sadie, abruptly, but looking at Helen with sheepish eye.

"Well, what?"

"Say, was yer honest goin' to blow seventy cents for that feed I spoke of up on Grand Street?"

"Certainly. And I——"

"And a dime to the waiter?"

"Of course."

"That's eighty cents," ran on Sadie, glibly enough now. "And twenty would make a dollar. I'll dig up the twenty cents to put with your eighty, and what d'ye say we run after old Lurcher an' give him a dollar—say we found it, you know—and then go upstairs to my house for dinner? Mommer's got a nice dinner, and she'd like to see you again fine!"

"I'll do it!" cried Helen, pulling out her purse at once. "Here! Here's a dollar bill. You run after him and give it to him. You can give me the twenty cents later."

"Sure!" cried the Russian girl, and she was off around the corner in the wake of the Lurcher, with flying feet.

Helen waited for her friend to return, just inside the tenement house door. When Sadie reappeared, Helen hugged her tight and kissed her.

"You are a dear!" the Western girl cried. "I do love you, Sadie!"

"Aw, chee! That ain't nothin'," objected the East Side girl. "We poor folks has gotter help each other."

So Helen would not spoil the little sacrifice by acknowledging to more money, and they climbed the stairs again to the Goronsky tenement. The girl from Sunset Ranch was glad—oh, so glad!—of this incident. Chilled as she had been by the selfishness in her uncle's Madison Avenue mansion, she was glad to have her heart warmed down here among the poor of Madison Street.



CHAPTER XX

OUT OF STEP WITH THE TIMES

"No," Sadie told Helen, afterward, "I am very sure that poor Lurcher man doesn't drink. Some says he does; but you never notice it on him. It's just his eyes."

"His eyes?" queried Helen, wonderingly.

"Yes. He's sort of blind. His eyelids keep fluttering all the time. He can't control them. And, if you notice, he usually lifts up the lid of one eye with his finger before he makes one of his base-runs for the next post. Chee! I'd hate to be like that."

"The poor old man! And can nothing be done for it?"

"Plenty, I reckon. But who's goin' to pay for it? Not him—he ain't got it to pay. We all has our troubles down here, Helen."

The girls had come down from the home of Sadie again, and Helen was preparing to leave her friend.

"Aren't there places to go in the city to have one's eyes examined? Free hospitals, I mean?"

"Sure! And they got Lurcher to one, once. But all they give him was a prescription for glasses, and it would cost a lot to get 'em. So it didn't do him no good."

Helen looked at Sadie suddenly. "How much would it take for the glasses?" she asked.

"I dunno. Ten dollars, mebbe."

"And do you s'pose he could have that prescription now?" asked Helen, eagerly.

"Mebbe. But why for?"

"Perhaps I could—could get somebody uptown interested in his case who is able to pay for the spectacles."

"Chee, that would be bully!" cried Sadie.

"Will you find out about the prescription?"

"Sure I will," declared Sadie. "Nex' time you come down here, Helen, I'll know all about it. And if you can get one of them rich ladies up there to pay for 'em—Well! it would beat goin' to a swell restaurant for a feed—eh?" and she laughed, hugged the Western girl, and then darted across the sidewalk to intercept a possible customer who was loitering past the row of garments displayed in front of the Finkelstein shop.

But Helen did not get downtown again as soon as she expected. When she awoke the next morning there had set in a steady drizzle—cold and raw—and the panes of her windows were so murky that she could not see even the chimneys and roofs, or down into the barren little yards.

This—nor a much heavier—rain would not have ordinarily balked Helen. She was used to being out in all winds and weathers. But she actually had nothing fit to wear in the rain.

If she had worn the new cheap dress out of doors she knew what would happen. It would shrink all out of shape. And she had no raincoat, nor would she ask her cousins—so she told herself—for the loan of an umbrella.

So, as long as it rained steadily, it looked as though the girl from Sunset Ranch was a sure-enough "shut-in." Nor did she contemplate this possibility with any pleasure.

There was nothing for her to do but read. And one cannot read all the time. She had no "fancy-work" with which to keep her hands and mind busy. She wondered what her cousins did on such days. She found out by keeping her ears and eyes open. After breakfast Belle went shopping in the limousine. There was an early luncheon and all three of the Starkweather girls went to a matinee. In neither case was Helen invited to go—no, indeed! She was treated as though she were not even in the house. Seldom did either of the older girls speak to her.

"I might as well be a ghost," thought Helen.

And this reminded her of the little old lady who paced the ghost-walk every night—the ex-nurse, Mary Boyle. She had thought of going to see her on the top floor before; but she had not been able to pluck up the courage.

Now that her cousins were gone from the house, however, and Mrs. Olstrom was taking a nap in her room, and Mr. Lawdor was out of the way, and all the under-servants mildly celebrating the free afternoon below stairs, Helen determined to venture out of her own room, along the main passage of the top floor, to the door which she believed must give upon the front suite of rooms which the little old lady occupied.

She knocked, but there was no response. Nor could she hear any sound from within. It struck Helen that the principal cruelty of the Starkweathers' treatment of this old soul was her being shut away alone up here at the top of the house—too far away from the rest of its occupants for a cry to be heard if the old lady should be in trouble.

"If they shut up a dog like this, he would howl and thus attract attention to his state," muttered Helen. "But here is a human being——"

She tried the door. The latch clicked and the door swung open. Helen stepped into a narrow, hall-like room, well furnished with old-fashioned furniture (probably brought from below stairs when Mr. Starkweather re-decorated the mansion) with one window in it. The door which evidently gave upon the remainder of the suite was closed.

As Helen listened, however, from behind this closed door came a cheerful, cracked voice—the same voice she had heard whispering the lullaby in the middle of the night. But now it was tuning up on an old-time ballad, very popular in its day:

"Wait till the clouds roll by, Jennie— Wait till the clouds roll by! Jennie, my own true loved one— Wait till the clouds roll by."

"She doesn't sound like a hopeless prisoner," thought Helen, with surprise.

She waited a minute longer and, as the thin yet still sweet voice stopped, Helen knocked timidly on the inner door. Immediately the voice said, "Come in, deary. 'Tis not for the likes of you to be knockin' at old Mary's door. Come in!"

Helen turned the knob slowly and went into the room. The moment she crossed the threshold she forgot the clouds and rain and gloominess which had depressed her. Indeed, it seemed as though the sun must be ever shining into this room, high up under the roof of the Starkweather mansion.

In the first place, it was most cheerfully papered and painted. There were pretty, simple, yellow and white hangings. The heavier pieces of old furniture had gay "tidies" or "throws" upon them to relieve the sombreness of the dark wood. The pictures on the walls were all in white or gold frames, and were of a cheerful nature—mostly pictures of childhood, or pictures which would amuse children. Evidently much of the furnishings of the old nursery had been brought up here to Mary Boyle's sitting-room.

Helen had a glimpse, through a half-open door, of the bedroom—quite as bright and pretty. There was a little stove set up here, and a fire burned in it. It was one of those stoves that have isinglass all around it so that the fire can be seen when it burns red. It added mightily to the cheerful tone of the room.

How neat everything appeared! Yet the very neatest thing in sight was the little old lady herself, sitting in a green-painted rocker, with a low sewing-table at her side, wooden needles clicking fast in her fleecy knitting.

She looked up at Helen with a little, bird-like motion—her head a bit on one side and her glance quizzical. This, it proved, was typical of Mary Boyle.

"Deary, deary me!" she said. "You're a new girl. And what do you want Mary to do for you?"

"I—I thought I'd come and make you a little call," said Helen, timidly.

This wasn't at all as she expected to find the shut-in! Instead of gloom, and tears, and the weakness of age, here were displayed all the opposite emotions and qualities. The woman who was forgotten did not appear to be an object of pity at all. She merely seemed out of step with the times.

"I'm sure you're very welcome, deary," said the old nurse. "Draw up the little rocker yonder. I always keep it for young company," and Mary Boyle, who had had no young company up here for ten or a dozen years, spoke as though the appearance of a youthful face and form was of daily occurrence.

"You see," spoke Helen, more confidently, "we are neighbors on this top floor."

"Neighbors; air we?"

"I live up here, too. The family have tucked me away out of sight."

"Hush!" said the little old woman. "We shouldn't criticise our bethers. No, no! And this is a very cheerful par-r-rt of the house, so it is."

"But it must be awful," exclaimed Helen, "to have to stay in it all the time!"

"I don't have to stay in it all the time," replied the nurse, quickly.

"No, ma'am. I hear you in the night going downstairs and walking in the corridor," Helen said, softly.

The wrinkled old face blushed very prettily, and Mary Boyle looked at her visitor doubtfully.

"Sure, 'tis such a comfort for an old body like me," she said, at last, "to make believe."

"Make believe?" cried Helen, with a smile. "Why, I'm not old, and I love to make believe."

"Ah, yis! But there is a differ bechune the make-believes of the young and the make-believes of the old. You are playin' you're grown up, or dramin' of what's comin' to you in th' future—sure, I know! I've had them drames, too, in me day.

"But with old folks 'tis different. We do be har-r-rking back instead of lookin' for'ard. And with me, it's thinkin' of the babies I've held in me ar-r-rms, and rocked on me knee, and walked the flure wid when they was ailin'—An' sure the babies of this house was always ailin', poor little things."

"They were a great trouble to you, then?" asked Helen, softly.

"Trouble, is it?" cried Mary Boyle, her eyes shining again. "Sure, how could a blessid infant be a trouble? 'Tis a means of grace they be to the hear-r-rt—I nade no preacher to tell me that, deary. I found thim so. And they loved me and was happy wid me," she added, cheerfully.

"The folks below think me a little quare in me head," she confided to her visitor. "But they don't understand. To walk up and down the nursery corridor late at night relaves the ache here," and she put her little, mitted hand upon her heart. "Ye see, I trod that path so often—so often——"

Her voice trailed off and she fell silent, gazing into the glow of the fire in the stove. But there was a smile on her lips. The past was no time to weep over. This cheerful body saw only the bright spots in her long, long life.

Helen loved to hear her talk. And soon she and Mary Boyle were very well acquainted. One thing about the old nurse Helen liked immensely. She asked no questions. She accepted Helen's visit as a matter of course; yet she showed very plainly that she was glad to have a young face before her.

But the girl from Sunset Ranch did not know how Mrs. Olstrom might view her making friends with the old lady; so she made her visit brief. But she promised to come again and bring a book to read to Mary Boyle.

"Radin' is a great accomplishment, deary," declared the old woman. "I niver seemed able to masther it—although me mistress oft tried to tache me. But, sure, there was so much to l'arn about babies, that ain't printed in no book, that I was always radin' them an' niver missed the book eddication till I come to be old. But th' foine poethry me mistress useter be radin' me! Sure, 'twould almost put a body to slape, so swate and grand it was."

So, Helen searched out a book of poems downstairs, and the next forenoon she ventured into the front suite again, and read ta Mary Boyle for an hour. The storm lasted several days, and each day the girl from the West spent more and more time with the little old woman.

But this was all unsuspected by Uncle Starkweather and the three girls. If Mrs. Olstrom knew she said nothing. At least, she timed her own daily visits to the little old woman so that she would not meet Helen in the rooms devoted to old Mary's comfort.

Nor were Helen's visits continued solely because she pitied Mary Boyle. How could she continue to pity one who did not pity herself?

No. Helen received more than she gave in this strange friendship. Seeking to amuse the old nurse, she herself gained such an uplift of heart and mind that it began to counteract that spirit of sullenness that had entered into the Western girl when she had first come to this house and had been received so unkindly by her relatives.

Instead of hating them, she began to pity them. How much Uncle Starkweather was missing by being so utterly selfish! How much the girls were missing by being self-centred!

Why, see it right here in Mary Boyle's case! Nobody could associate with the delightful little old woman without gaining good from the association. Instead of being friends with the old nurse, and loving her and being loved by her, the Starkweather girls tucked her away in the attic and tried to ignore her existence.

"They don't know what they're missing—poor things!" murmured Helen, thinking the situation over.

And from that time her own attitude changed toward her cousins. She began to look out for chances to help them, instead of making herself more and more objectionable to Belle, Hortense, and Flossie.



CHAPTER XXI

BREAKING THE ICE

As for Floss, Helen had already got a hold upon that young lady.

"Come on, Helen!" the younger cousin would whisper after dinner. "Come up to my room and give me a start on these lessons; will you? That's a good chap."

And often when the rest of the family thought the unwelcome visitor had retired to her room at the top of the house, she was shut in with Flossie, trying to guide the stumbling feet of that rather dull girl over the hard places in her various studies.

For Floss had soon discovered that the girl from Sunset Ranch somehow had a wonderful insight into every problem she put up to her. Nor were they all in algebra.

"I don't see how you managed to do it, 'way out there in that wild place you lived in; but you must have gone through 'most all the text-books I have," declared Flossie, once.

"Oh, I had to grab every chance there was for schooling," Helen responded, and changed the subject instantly.

Flossie thought she had a secret from her sisters, however, and she hugged it to her with much glee. She realized that Helen was by no means the ignoramus Belle and Hortense said.

"And let 'em keep on thinking it," Flossie said, to herself, with a chuckle. "I don't know what Helen has got up her sleeve; but I believe she is fooling all of us."

A long, dreary fortnight of inclement weather finally got on the nerves of Hortense. Belle could go out tramping in it, or cab-riding, or what-not. She was athletic, and loved exercise in the open air, no matter what the weather might be. But the second sister was just like a pussy-cat; she loved comfort and the warm corners. However, being left alone by Belle, and nobody coming in to call for several days, Hortense was completely overpowered by loneliness.

She had nothing within herself to fight off nervousness and depression. So, having caught a little, sniffly cold, she decided that she was sick and went to bed.

The Starkweather girls did not each have a maid. Mr. Starkweather could not afford that luxury. But Hortense at once requisitioned one of the housemaids to wait upon her and of course Mrs. Olstrom's very carefully-thought-out system was immediately turned topsy-turvy.

"I cannot allow you, Miss, to have the services of Maggie all day long," Helen heard the housekeeper announce at the door of the invalid's room. "We are not prepared to do double work in this house. You must either speak to your father and have a nurse brought in, or wait upon yourself."

"Oh, you heartless, wicked thing!" cried Hortense. "How can you be so cruel? I couldn't wait upon myself. I want my broth. And I want my hair done. And you can see yourself how the room is all in a mess. And——"

"Maggie must do her parlor work to-day. You know that. If you want to be waited upon, Miss, get your sister to do it," concluded the housekeeper, and marched away.

"And she very well knows that Belle has gone out somewhere and Flossie is at school. I could die here, and nobody would care," wailed Hortense.

Helen walked into the richly furnished room. Hortense was crying into her pillow. Her hair was still in two unkempt braids and she did need a fresh boudoir cap and gown.

"Can I do anything to help you, 'Tense?" asked Helen, cheerfully.

"Oh, dear me—no!" exclaimed her cousin. "You're so loud and noisy. And do, do call me by my proper name."

"I forgot. Sure, I'll call you anything you say," returned the Western girl, smiling at her. Meanwhile she was moving about the room, deftly putting things to rights.

"I'm going to tell father the minute he comes home!" wailed Hortense, ignoring her cousin for the time and going back to her immediate troubles. "I am left all alone—and I'm sick—and nobody cares—and—and——"

"Where do you keep your caps, Hortense?" interrupted Helen. "And if you'll let me, I'll brush your hair and make it look pretty. And then you get into a fresh nightgown——"

"Oh, I couldn't sit up," moaned Hortense. "I really couldn't. I'm too weak."

"I'll show you how. Let me fix the pillows—so! And so! There—nothing like trying; is there? You're comfortable; aren't you?"

"We-ell——"

Helen was already manipulating the hairbrush. She did it so well, and managed to arrange Hortense's really beautiful hair so simply yet easily on her head that the latter quite approved of it—and said so—when she looked into her hand-mirror.

Then Helen got her into a chair, in a fresh robe and a pretty kimono, while she made the bed—putting on new sheets and cases for the pillows so that all should be sweet and clean. Of course, Hortense wasn't really sick—only lazy. But she thought she was sick and Helen's attentions pleased the spoiled girl.

"Why, you're not such a bad little thing, Helen," she said, dipping into a box of chocolates on the stand by her bedside. Chocolates were about all the medicine Hortense took during this "bad attack." And she was really grateful—in her way—to her cousin.

It was later on this day that Helen plucked up courage to go to her uncle and give him back the letter he had written to Fenwick Grimes.

"I did not use it, sir," she said.

"Ahem!" he said, and with evident relief. "You have thought better of it, I hope? You mean to let the matter rest where it is?"

"I have not abandoned my attempt to get at the truth—no, Uncle Starkweather."

"How foolish of you, child!" he cried.

"I do not think it is foolish. But I will try not to mix you up in my inquiries. That is why I did not use the letter."

"And you have seen Grimes?" he asked, hastily.

"Oh, yes."

"Does he know who you are?"

"Oh, yes."

"And you reached him without an introduction? I understand he is hard to approach. He is a money-lender, in a way, and he has an odd manner of never appearing to come into personal contact with his clients."

"Yes, sir. I think him odd."

"Did—did he think he could help you?"

"He thinks just as you do, sir," stated Helen, honestly. "And, then, he accused you of sending me to him at first; so I would not use your letter and so compromise you."

"Ahem!" said the gentleman, surprised that this young girl should be so circumspect. It rather startled him to discover that she was thoughtful far beyond her years. Was it possible that—somehow—she might bring to light the truth regarding the unhappy difficulty that had made Prince Morrell an exile from his old home for so many years?

Once May Van Ramsden ran in to see Belle and caught Helen going through the hall on her way to her own room. It was just after luncheon, which she and Belle had eaten in a silence that could be felt. Belle would not speak to her cousin unless she was obliged to, and Helen did not see that forcing her attentions upon the other girl would do any good.

"Why, here you are, Helen Morrell! Why don't I ever see you when I come here?" cried the caller, shaking Helen by both hands and smiling upon her heartily from her superior height. "When are your cousins going to bring you to call upon me?"

Helen might have replied, truthfully, "Never;" but she only shook her head and smilingly declared: "I hope to see you again soon, Miss Van Ramsden."

"Well, I guess you must!" cried the caller. "I want to hear some more of your experiences," and she went on to meet the scowling Belle at the door of the reception parlor.

Later her eldest cousin said to the Western girl:

"In going up and down to your room, Miss, I want you to remember that there is a back stairway. Use the servants' stairs, if you please!"

Helen made no reply. She wasn't breaking much of the ice between her and Belle Starkweather, that was sure. And to add to Belle's dislike for her cousin, there was another happening in which Miss Van Ramsden was concerned, soon after this.

Hortense was still abed, for the weather remained unpleasant—and there really was nothing else for the languid cousin to do. Miss Van Ramsden found Belle out, and she went upstairs to say "how-do" to the invalid. Helen was in the room making the spoiled girl more comfortable, and Miss Van Ramsden drew the younger girl out into the hall when she left.

"I really have come to see you, child," she said to Helen, frankly. "I was telling papa about you and he said he would dearly love to meet Prince Morrell's daughter. Papa went to college with your father, my dear."

Helen was glad of this, and yet she flushed a little. She was quite frank, however: "Does—does your father know about poor dad's trouble?" she whispered.

"He does. And he always believed Mr. Morrell not guilty. Father was one of the firm's creditors, and he has always wished your father had come to him instead of leaving the city so long ago."

"Then he's been paid?" cried Helen, eagerly.

"Certainly. It is a secret, I believe—father warned me not to speak of it unless you did; but everybody was paid by your father after a time. That did not look as though he were dishonest. His partner took advantage of the bankruptcy courts."

"Of—of course your father has no idea who was guilty?" whispered Helen, anxiously.

"None at all," replied Miss Van Ramsden. "It was a mystery then and remains so to this day. That bookkeeper was a peculiar man, but had a good record; and it seems that he left the city before the checks were cashed. Or, so the evidence seemed to prove.

"Now, don't cry, my dear! Come! I wish we could help you clear up that old trouble. But many of your father's old friends—like papa—never believed Prince Morrell guilty."

Helen was crying by this time. The kindness of this older girl broke down her self-possession. They heard somebody coming up the stairs, and Miss Van Ramsden said, quickly:

"Take me to your room, dear. We can talk there."

Helen never thought that she might be giving the Starkweather family deadly offence by doing this. She led Miss Van Ramsden immediately to the rear of the house and up the back stairway to the attic floor. The caller looked somewhat amazed when Helen ushered her into the room.

"Well, they could not have put you much nearer the sky; could they?" she said, laughing, yet eyeing Helen askance.

"Oh, I don't mind it up here," returned Helen, truthfully enough. "And I have some company on this floor."

"Ahem! The maids, I suppose?" said May Van Ramsden.

"No, no," Helen assured her, eagerly. "The dearest little old lady you ever saw."

Then she stopped and looked at her caller in some distress. For the moment she had forgotten that she was probably on the way to reveal the Starkweather family skeleton!

"A little old lady? Who can that be?" cried the caller. "You interest me."

"I—I—Well, it is an old lady who was once nurse in the family and I believe Uncle Starkweather cares for her——"

"It's never Nurse Boyle?" cried Miss Van Ramsden, suddenly starting up. "Why! I remember about her. But somehow, I thought she had died years ago. Why, as a child I used to visit her at the house, and she used to like to have me come to see her. That was before your cousins lived here, Helen. Then I went to Europe for several years and when we returned the house had all been done over, your uncle's family was here, and I think—I am not sure—somebody told me dear old Mary Boyle was dead."

"No," observed Helen, thoughtfully. "She is not dead. She is only forgotten."

Miss Van Ramsden looked at the Western girl for some moments in silence. She seemed to understand the whole matter without a word of further explanation.

"Would you mind letting me see Mary Boyle while I am here?" she asked, gravely. "She was a very lovely old soul, and all the families hereabout—I have heard my mother often say—quite envied the Starkweathers their possession of such a treasure."

"Certainly we can go in and see her," declared Helen, throwing all discretion to the winds. "I was going to read to her this afternoon, anyway. Come along!"

She led the caller through the hall to Mary Boyle's little suite of rooms. To herself Helen said:

"Let the wild winds of disaster blow! Whew! If the family hears of this I don't know but they will want to have me arrested—or worse! But what can I do? And then—Mary Boyle deserves better treatment at their hands."



CHAPTER XXII

IN THE SADDLE

The little old lady "tidied" her own room. She hopped about like a bird with the aid of the ebony crutch, and Helen and Miss Van Ramsden heard the "step—put" of her movements when they entered the first room.

"Come in, deary!" cried the dear old soul. "I was expecting you. Ah, whom have we here? Good-day to you, ma'am!"

"Nurse Boyle! don't you remember me?" cried the visitor, going immediately to the old lady and kissing her on both cheeks.

"Bless us, now! How would I know ye?" cried the old woman. "Is it me old eyes I have set on ye for many a long year now?"

"And I blame myself for it, Nurse," cried May Van Ramsden. "Don't you remember little May—the Van Ramsdens' May—who used to come to see you so often when she was about so-o high?" cried the girl, measuring the height of a five or six-year-old.

"A neighbor's baby did come to see Old Mary now and then," cried the nurse. "But you're never May?"

"I am, Nurse."

"And growed so tall and handsome? Well, well, well! It does bate all, so it does. Everybody grows up but Mary Boyle; don't they?" and the old woman cackled out a sweet, high laugh, and sat down to "visit" with her callers.

The two girls had a very charming time with Mary Boyle. And May Van Ramsden promised to come again. When they left the old lady she said, earnestly, to Helen:

"And there are others that will be glad to come and see Nurse Boyle. When she was well and strong—before she had to use that crutch—she often appeared at our houses when there was trouble—serious trouble—especially with the babies or little children. And what Mary Boyle did not know about pulling young ones out of the mires of illness, wasn't worth knowing. Why, I know a dozen boys and girls whose lives were probably saved by her. They shall be reminded of her existence. And—it shall be due to you, Little Cinderella!"

Helen smiled deprecatingly. "It will be due to your own kind heart, Miss Van Ramsden," she returned. "I see that everybody in the city is not so busy with their own affairs that they cannot think of other people."

The young lady kissed her again and said goodbye. But that did not end the matter—no, indeed! The news that Miss Van Ramsden had been taken to the topmost story of the Starkweather mansion—supposedly to Helen's own room only—by the Western girl, dribbled through the servants to Belle Starkweather herself when she came home.

"Now, Pa! I won't stand that common little thing being here any longer—no, I won't! Why, she did that just on purpose to make folks talk—to make people believe that we abuse her. Of course, she told May that I sent her to the top story to sleep. You get rid of that girl, Pa, or I declare I'll go away. I guess I can find somebody to take me in as long as you wish to keep Prince Morrell's daughter here in my place."

"Ahem! I—I must beg you to compose yourself, Belle——"

"I won't—and that's flat!" declared his eldest daughter. "Either she goes; or I do."

"Do let Belle go, Pa," drawled Flossie. "She is getting too bossy, anyway. I don't mind having Helen here. She is rather good fun. And May Van Ramsden came here particularly to see Helen."

"That's not so!" cried Belle, stamping her foot.

"It is. Maggie heard her say so. Maggie was coming up the stairs and heard May ask Helen to take her to her room. What could the poor girl do?"

"Ahem! Flossie—I am amazed at you—amazed at you!" gasped Mr. Starkweather. "What do you learn at school?"

"Goodness me! I couldn't tell you," returned the youngest of his daughters, carelessly. "It's none of it any good, though, Pa. You might as well take me out."

"I've told that girl to use the back stairs, and to keep out of the front of the house," went on Belle, ignoring Flossie. "If she had not been hanging about the front of the house, May Van Ramsden would not have seen her——"

"'Tain't so!" snapped Flossie.

"Will you be still, minx?" demanded the older sister.

"I don't care. Let's give Helen a fair deal. I tell you, Pa, May said she came particularly to see Helen. Besides, Helen had been in Hortense's room, and that is where May found her. Helen was brushing Hortense's hair. Hortense told me so."

"Ahem! I am astonished at you, Flossie. The fact remains that Helen is a source of trouble in the house. I really do wish I knew how to get rid of her."

"You give me permission, Pa," sneered Belle, "and I'll get rid of her very quickly—you see!"

"No, no!" exclaimed the troubled father. "I—I cannot use the iron hand at present—not at present."

"Humph!" exclaimed the shrewd Belle. "I'd like to know what you are afraid of, Pa?"

Mr. Starkweather tried to frown down his daughter, but was unsuccessful. He merely presented a picture of a very cowardly man trying to look brave. It wasn't much of a picture.

So—as may be easily conceived—Helen was not met at dinner by her relatives in any conciliatory manner. Yet the girl from the West really wished she might make friends with Uncle Starkweather and her cousins.

"It must be that a part of the fault is with me," she told herself, when she crept up to her room after a gloomy time in the dining-room. "If I had it in me to please them—to make them happier—surely they could not treat me as they do. Oh, dear, I wish I had learned better how to be popular."

That night Helen felt about as bad as she had any time since she arrived in the great city. She was too disturbed to read. She lay in bed until the small hours of the morning, unable to sleep, and worrying over all her affairs, which seemed, since she had arrived in New York, to go altogether wrong.

She had not made an atom of progress in that investigation which she had hoped would bring to light the truth about the mystery which had sent her father and mother West—fugitives—before she was born. She had only succeeded in becoming thoroughly suspicious of her Uncle Starkweather and of Fenwick Grimes.

Nor had she made any advance in the discovery of the mysterious Allen Chesterton, the bookkeeper of her father's old firm, who held, she believed, the key to the mystery. She did not know what step to take next. She did not know what to do. And there was nobody with whom she could consult—nobody in all this great city to whom she could go.

Never before had Helen felt so lonely as she did this night. She had money enough with her to pay somebody to help her dig back for facts regarding the disappearance of the money belonging to the old firm of Grimes & Morrell. But she did not know how to go about getting the help she needed.

Her only real confidante—Sadie Goronsky—would not know how to advise her in this emergency.

"I wish I had let Dud Stone give me his address. He said he was learning to be a lawyer," thought Helen. "And just now, I s'pose, a lawyer is what I need most. But I wouldn't know how to go about engaging a lawyer—not a good one."

She awoke at her usual time next morning, and the depression of the night before was still with her. But when she jumped up she saw that it was no longer raining. The sky was overcast, but she could venture forth without running the risk of spoiling her new suit.

And right there a desperate determination came into Helen Morrell's mind. She had learned that on the west side of Central Park there was a riding academy. She was hungry for an hour in the saddle. It seemed to her that a gallop would clear all the cobwebs away and make her feel like herself once more.

The house was still silent and dark. She took her riding habit out of the closet, made it up into a bundle, and crept downstairs with it under her arm. She escaped the watchful Lawdor for once, and got out by the area door before even the cook had crept, yawning, downstairs to begin her day's work.

Helen, hurrying through the dark, dripping streets, found a little restaurant where she could get rolls and coffee on her way to the Columbus Circle riding academy. It was still early when the girl from Sunset Ranch reached her goal. Yes, a mount was to be had, and she could change her street clothes for her riding suit in the dressing-rooms.

The city—at least, that part of it around Central Park—was scarcely awake when Helen walked her mount out of the stable and into the park. The man in charge had given her to understand that there were few riders astir so early.

"You'll have the bridle-path to yourself, Miss, going out," he said.

Helen had picked up a little cap to wear, and astride the saddle, with her hair tied with a big bow of ribbon at the nape of her neck, she looked very pretty as the horse picked his way across the esplanade into the bridle-path. But there were few, as the stableman had said, to see her so early in the morning.

It did not rain, however. Indeed, there was a fresh breeze which, she saw, was tearing the low-hung clouds to shreds. And in the east a rosy spot in the fog announced the presence of the sun himself, ready to burst through the fleecy veil and smile once more upon the world.

The trees and brush dripped upon the fallen leaves. For days the park caretakers had been unable to rake up these, and they had become almost a solid pattern of carpeting for the lawns. And down here in the bridle-path, as she cantered along, their pungent odor, stirred by the hoofs of her mount, rose in her nostrils.

This wasn't much like galloping over an open trail on a nervous little cow-pony. But it was both a bodily and mental relief for the outdoor girl who had been, for these past weeks, shut into a groove for which she was so badly fitted.

She saw nobody on horseback but a mounted policeman, who turned and trotted along beside her, and was pleasant and friendly. This pleased Helen; and especially was she pleased when she learned that he had been West and had "punched cows" himself. That had been some years ago, but he remembered the Link-A—now the Sunset—Ranch, although he had never worked for that outfit.

Helen's heart expanded as she cantered along. The sun dispelled the mist and shone warm upon the path. The policeman left her, but now there were other riders abroad. She went far out of town, as directed by the officer, and found the ride beautiful. After all, there were some lovely spots in this great city, if one only knew where to find them.

She had engaged a strong horse with good wind; but she did not want to break him down. So she finally turned her face toward the city again and let the animal take its own pace home.

She had ridden down as far as 110th Street and had crossed over into the park once more, when she saw a couple of riders advancing toward her from the south. They were a young man and a girl, both well mounted, and Helen noted instantly that they handled their spirited horses with ease.

Indeed, she was so much interested in the mounts themselves, that she came near passing the two without a look at their faces. Suddenly she heard an exclamation from the young fellow, she looked up, and found herself gazing straight into the handsome face of Dudley Stone.

"For the love of heaven!" gasped that astonished young man. "It surely is Helen Morrell! Jess! See here! Here's the very nicest girl who ever came out of Montana!"

Dud's sister—Helen knew she must be his sister, for she had the same coloring as and a strong family resemblance to the budding lawyer—wheeled her horse and rode directly to Helen's side.

"Oh, Miss Morrell!" she cried, putting out her gauntleted hand. "Is it really she, Dud? How wonderful!"

Helen shook hands rather timidly, for Miss Jessie Stone was torrential in her speech. There wasn't a chance to "get a word in edgewise" when once she was started upon a subject that interested her.

"My goodness me!" she cried, still shaking Helen's hand. "Is this really the girl who pulled you out of that tree, Dud? Who saved your life and took you on her pony to the big ranch? My, how romantic!

"And you really own a ranch, Miss Morrell? How nice that must be! And plenty of cattle on it—Why! you don't mind the price of beef at all; do you? And what a clever girl you must be, too. Dud came back full of your praise, now I tell you——"

"There, there!" cried Dud. "Hold on a bit, Jess, and let's hear how Miss Morrell is—and what she is doing here in the big city, and all that."

"Well, I declare, Dud! You take the words right out of my mouth," said his sister, warmly. "I was just going to ask her that. And we're going to the Casino for breakfast, Miss Morrell, and you must come with us. You've had your ride; haven't you?"

"I—I'm just returning," admitted Helen, rather breathless, if Jess was not.

"Come on, then!" cried the good-natured but talkative city girl. "Come, Dud, you ride ahead and engage a table and order something nice. I'm as ravenous as a wolf. Dear me, Miss Morrell, if you have been riding long you must be quite famished, too!"

"I had coffee and rolls early," said Helen, as Dud spurred his horse away.

"Oh, what's coffee and rolls? Nothing at all—nothing at all! After I've been jounced around on this saddle for an hour I feel as though I never had eaten. I don't care much for riding myself, but Dud is crazy for it, and I come to keep him company. You must ride with us, Miss Morrell. How long are you going to stay in town? And to think of your having saved Dud's life—Well! he'll never get over talking about it."

"He makes too much of the incident," declared Helen, determined to get in a word. "I only lent him a rope and he saved himself."

"No. You carried him on your pony to that ranch. Oh, I know it all by heart. He talks about it to everybody. Dud is so enthusiastic about the West. He is crazy to go back again—he wants to live there. I tell him I'll go out and try it for a while, and if I find I can stand it, he can hang out his shingle in that cow-town—what do you call it?"

"Elberon?" suggested Helen.

"Yes—Elberon. Dud says there is a chance for another lawyer there. And he came back here and entered the offices of Larribee & Polk right away, so as to get working experience, and be entered at the bar all the sooner. But say!" exclaimed Jess, "I believe one reason why he is so eager to go back to the West is because you live there."

"Oh, Miss Stone!"

"Do call me Jess. 'Miss Stone' is so stiff. And you and I are going to be the very best of friends."

"I really hope so, Jess. But you must call me Helen, too," said the girl from Sunset Ranch.

Jess leaned out from her saddle, putting the horses so close that the trappings rubbed, and kissed the Western girl resoundingly on the cheek.

"I just loved you!" said the warm-hearted creature, "when Dud first told me about you. But now that I see you in the flesh, I love you for your very own self! I hope you'll love me, too, Helen Morrell—And you won't mind if I talk a good deal?"



"Not in the least!" laughed Helen. "And I do love you already. I am so, so glad that you and Dud both like me," she added, "for my cousins do not like me at all, and I have been very unhappy since coming to New York."

"Here we are!" cried Jess, without noting closely what her new friend said. "And there is Dud waiting for us on the porch. Dear old Dud! Whatever should I have done if you hadn't got him out of that tree-top, Helen?"



CHAPTER XXIII

MY LADY BOUNTIFUL

That was a wonderful breakfast at the Casino. Not that Helen ever remembered much about what she ate, although Dud had ordered choice fruit and heartier food that would have tempted the most jaded appetite instead of that of a healthy girl who had been riding horseback for two hours and a half.

But, it was so heartening to be with people at the table who "talked one's own language." The Stones and Helen chattered like a trio of young crows. Dud threatened to chloroform his sister so that he and Helen could get in a word or two during Jess's lapse into unconsciousness; but finally that did not become necessary because of the talkative girl's interest in a story that Helen related.

They had discussed many other topics before this subject was broached. And it was the real reason for Helen's coming East to visit the Starkweathers. "Dud" was "in the way of being a lawyer," as he had previously told her, and Helen had come to realize that it was a lawyer's advice she needed more than anything else.

"Now, Jess, will you keep still long enough for me to listen to the story of my very first client?" demanded Dud, sternly, of his sister.

"Oh, I'll stuff the napkin into my mouth! You can gag me! Your very first client, Dud! And it's so interesting."

"It is customary for clients to pay over a retainer; isn't it?" queried Helen, her eyes dancing. "How much shall it be, Mr. Lawyer?" and she opened her purse.

There was the glint of a gold piece at the bottom of the bag. Dud flushed and reached out his hand for it.

"That five dollars, Miss Helen. Thank you. I shall never spend this coin," declared Dud, earnestly. "And I shall take it to a jeweler's and have it properly engraved."

"What will you have put on it?" asked Helen, laughing.

He looked at her from under level brows, smiling yet quite serious.

"I shall have engraved on it 'Snuggy, to Dud'—if I may?" he said.

But Helen shook her head and although she still smiled, she said:

"You'd better wait a bit, Mr. Lawyer, and see if your advice brings about any happy conclusion of my trouble. But you can keep the gold piece, just the same, to remember me by."

"As though I needed that reminder!" he cried.

Jess removed the corner of the napkin from between her pretty teeth. "Get busy, do!" she cried. "I'm dying to hear about this strange affair you say you have come East to straighten out, Helen."

So the girl from Sunset Ranch told all her story. Everything her father had said to her upon the topic before his death, and all she suspected about Fenwick Grimes and Allen Chesterton—even to the attitude Uncle Starkweather took in the matter—she placed before Dud Stone.

He gave it grave attention. Helen was not afraid to talk plainly to him, and she held nothing back. But at the best, her story was somewhat disconnected and incomplete. She possessed very few details of the crime which had been committed. Mr. Morrell himself had been very hazy in his statements regarding the affair.

"What we want first," declared Dud, impressively, "is to get the facts. Of course, at the time, the trouble must have made some stir. It got into the newspapers."

"Oh, dear, yes," said Helen. "And that is what Uncle Starkweather is afraid of. He fears it will get into the papers again if I make any stir about it, and then there will be a scandal."

"With his name connected with it?"

"Yes."

"He's dreadfully timid for his own good name; isn't he?" remarked Dud, sarcastically. "Well, first of all, I'll get the date of the occurrence and then search the files of all the city papers. The reporters usually get such matters pretty straight. To misstate such business troubles is skating on the thin ice of libel, and newspapers are careful.

"Well, when we have all the facts before us—what people surmised, even, and how it looked to 'the man on the street,' as the saying is—then we'll know better how to go ahead.