brought her here. He was furious about her name, it's Aprilla, you know,Aprilla Stannard. He insisted on calling her Pete,' 'to make it seem that she was n't a girl. Then when she had been here about a year he got a panic about her being the only one of her species on the ranch-she was getting toward fourteen and was pretty handy about the house. So he sent back to Ohio for Mrs. Sandridge, his cousin, you know."

"Ah, yes; our amiable but precise friend whom I have had the pleasure of meeting on occasion."

"Uncle made her keep out of his sight most of the time, and I don't suppose he spoke two dozen words to her in the year. But he seemed satisfied to have her here because of P-Miss Stannard."

The lawyer looked out on the glistening orchard and crossed his legs.

"But I did n't come out from San José to gossip about your uncle's peculiar views," he said, at length. "There is a little matter of business to be attended to, and with your good permission I will ask you to call Miss Stannard."

Silas disappeared, and Mr. Golightly communed with nature once more. And when the charms of the scene began to pall on him, he brought out his eye-glasses and a packet of papers.

Silas, on returning, announced that "She'll be in directly, sir," and was followed a moment later by the young woman herself.

Aprilla Stannard looked very charming in Mr. Golightly's eyes as she entered the door in her simple dress, with a halfscared look on her face. She was a pretty girl of good figure and a bright rosy complexion, and Mr. Golightly was willing to risk a professional opinion that she was worth admiring. He rose and bowed with. all the courtesy of the old-school gentle

man.

"The charm of the morning is heightened by the privilege of looking upon you, Miss Stannard."

"Thank you, sir," said Aprilla looking a shade annoyed. Aprilla was of a practical mind and objected to shams, under which head she classed Mr. Golightly's compliment.

Mr. Golightly bore a slight resemblance

to Daniel Webster-a resemblance in which he took much pride and cultivated to the best of his ability. He now became as Websteresque as possible and drew a chair up to the table.

"My dear young friends," he said, "I am here on a little matter of business connected with your uncle's estate. I have in my hand your uncle's will.”

Silas looked uncomfortable and Aprilla nodded gravely.

"You have not unjustifiably had, I doubt not, some-er-expectations. I am happy to assure you that they may now be realized."

"We expected that Uncle Jacob would do as much for us as for anybody," said Silas, drawing a long breath, and Aprilla nodded gravely again.

"Quite right, quite right," said Mr. Golightly. "Aside from some trifling bequests to other relations, the property is left to Silas Davenant and Aprilla Stannard, in equal shares."

Both the listeners gave a slight gasp, and Aprilla's eyes flashed with a pleasure that she did not allow to appear on her face.

"There are, however, conditions a condition, I should say," continued Mr. Golightly slowly. Golightly slowly. "The bequest is to be enjoyed only while you remain single. On the marriage of either, the whole estate vests at once in the other."

"Oh!" gasped Aprilla, and then she shut her lips tightly as though she was afraid she would say something that had better be left unsaid.

"Well, he will now be able to change all that. Your uncle's property includes not only this ranch and the other places hereabouts, which you are doubtless informed of, but there are bonds, stocks, and mortgages enough to bring the total above five hundred thousand dollars."

And thereupon Mr. Golightly went into a long description of the estate of the late Jacob Davenant, and furnished more information than his listeners could well absorb at one sitting.

"By the way," he said, as he rose to take his leave, "there is a bare chance that you could break your uncle's will in regard to that condition. It was very carefully drawn, and I think it will hold. However, I don't advise on that point. I explained to Mr. Davenant on drawing the will that the law does not favor restraints on marriage; but he declared that it did not matter, that his will would be enough. You would accept the property with the condition or not at all.”

"Of course," said Silas, "the money was his, and he could do as he pleased with it, and we don't have to take it if we don't like the conditions. But I guess we can stand 'em."

Mr. Golightly smiled a dry smile that might have been interpreted to mean that the young man would have a different opinion some day. And with his most majestic Websterian manner he made his parting compliments to Aprilla, climbed into his buggy, and drove down the road toward San José.

"Well Pete, that is n't so bad," said Silas, seating himself on the topmost step of the veranda as Mr. Golightly was swallowed up in a retreating cloud of dust.

Aprilla leaned against the awning-post and looked thoughtfully into vacancy. "No," she said; "Uncle Jacob has been very generous."

"It's a big pot of money," continued Silas. "But I never thought of his putting such a condition on it. I did n't think he would carry his dislike of marriage beyond the grave with him.”

"I dare say," said Aprilla smiling, "that if he could have abolished women and marriage at the stroke of the pen he would have been happy. Dear me! I suppose I sha'n't be Pete' any longer,

now that there is no one who has to try to deceive himself into thinking of me as a boy."

O, you'll be Pete to me, I suppose, to the end of time, and you 're Miss Stannard now to everybody else except Aunt Sandridge."

"I say, Pete," he continued, "I've often wondered why Uncle Jacob had such a dislike for women."

"Don't you know?" said Aprilla, suddenly sitting down with a show of lively interest, and a shadow of awe in her voice, "neither did I until yesterday, when Aunt Sandridge told me."

"You don't suppose I tackled Uncle Jacob with the question, do you Pete?" said Silas, with a grim twinkle in his eye.

"No; of course not. You'd be worse off than Daniel in the lion's den if you did. Aunt Sandridge never gave a hint of it while uncle was alive. She would n't have dared to whisper it into the ground, like the fellow in the story that told the secret of King Midas's cars."

"Well, fire away! Let's hear it," said Silas looking interested.

Aprilla hesitated a moment, and then began slowly and softly: "Uncle Jacob was cruelly wronged, and by a woman. It was back in Ohio, more than thirty years ago, before you or I were born. He fell in love, and the girl promised to marry him. They all thought that she loved him as he loved her. She was said to be beautiful, and had the ways that charm men. They were to be married with a grand wedding, for that place, for Uncle Jacob was well-to-do for a young man. A week before the day set for the wedding they went to a dance together. Aunt Sandridge was there, and all the young people of the country had come. Just about midnight this girl slipped away from uncle's side, and when he asked for her she was nowhere to be found. Then they learned that she had driven away with a married man of the town, who left wife and children to go with her. There were some who started to follow them, but Uncle Jacob went home as though nothing had happened. But it was found that he would never speak to a woman from that day. The only one he was known to have a word with there was his own sister-my

"Yes," said Aprilla; "he tried to revenge himself on all women for the wrong that one had done him. But we two should be the last to say that he was lacking in heart."

"Well," said Silas reflectively, "as for affection, I really never thought of his having any more than this post."

"O, Silas, how can you?" cried Aprilla impulsively, with tears in her voice. "Where would we two orphans have been if he had been without heart? Did he not take you when you were a wee boy, left alone in the world? Was he not the only father you ever knew? Did he not break his vow to himself to care for me when I must have begged or starved? Did he not give us clothes and education?"

"We've had to do some pretty hard work for our board and clothes, Pete," said Silas.

"Just the training we needed," said Aprilla fiercely. "I'm sure Uncle Jacob loved us dearly, even if he did try to convince himself and everybody else that he did n't. You told me yourself that he pined for me all that year I was away teaching school, and he just forced me to invite myself back."

"Don't get excited, Pete," said Silas, smiling at her earnestness. "Uncle Jacob was n't so bad as he let on, of course, and he's made it up with his fortune condition and all."

"Yes; that was horrid of him," said Aprilla. "But I suppose you'll try to break the condition when you get a good ready."

"No, indeed," said Silas stoutl "There is n't a woman on the earth that I want to marry, Pete. Even if I could break the will, I would n't. It's our bargain with uncle, and I'll keep it."

"Yes; it's a bargain," said Aprilla quietly, looking at him intently. Then she suddenly rose to her feet. "Anyhow," she continued rapidly, "Uncle Jacob was a dear good old polar bear, and you 're just as mean as you can be to say or think anything against him. So there!" And

Pete's got as good sense as any of 'em," he thought; but I guess the best of 'em are a little light in the upper story. Like enough, Uncle Jacob was right about 'em after all.”

II.

Thomas Golightly sat in his office in a most un-Websterian attitude. His feet were on his desk and his eyes were buried in the copy of the California Reports that he held in his hand. The day outside was dull. The first December rain had come, and though the morning had broken fair, it was again overcast. The damp south wind was blowing, and the masses of clouds were hurrying toward the north as though they were the cavalry of the sky hastening forward to expected battle.

But Mr. Golightly minded not the storm-clouds without, and it was not until the respectful clerk had twice made the announcement, A lady to see you, sir," that he looked up from his reading.

He hastily lowered his feet from the desk. The lady, instead of waiting without, had followed the clerk, and Mr. Golightly was pained at the discovery of his position. He rose, wrapped in a double thickness of dignity-even such dignity as he usually reserved for his arguments before the Supreme Court-for Mr. Golightly felt an inward tingle of shame and vexation that a lady should have seen him sitting with his boots as high as his head. For, although this attitude is good for the faculties of reflection, it is not dignified.

Mr. Golightly bowed stiffly, and motioned the lady to a chair.

"O, Mr. Golightly!" said the lady, and then stopped. At the words Mr. Golightly unbent and saw what his inward. confusion had prevented him from seeing

at first.

"Ah, Mrs. Sandridge," he said, "this is an unexpected pleasure. And in such weather, too."

Mrs. Sandridge was not at her ease, but she looked relieved.

"quite unexlook to be here

"Yes, yes," she said; pected. You see I did n't myself, but Aprilla had to come down to San José, anyways she thought she had to come, which amounts to the same thing, you know, if you have girls of your own,-and so I came too, for I did n't mind the mud, and as for the rain it did n't look like that when we started. And the rain is just what is needed; for the pasture was getting pretty bad and some of the wells down toward Smiley's has been awful low for the last month, or even since October."

Mrs. Sandridge paused for want of breath, and the lawyer reflected that Mrs. Sandridge's angular features were not beautiful. "Still she is doubtless invaluable on a ranch," he added apologetically to himself.

Then he spoke aloud, and agreed that the rain was needed. Thus encouraged, Mrs. Sandridge went on to describe more particularly the expected benefit to the crops from the downpour.

The lawyer regarded her absently, until a pause for breath gave him a chance to test his suspicion that Mrs. Sandridge had something on her mind besides the state. of the weather.

"I am not wrong, I believe, Mrs. Sandridge, in surmising that there was some subject on which you wished my advice?"

Mrs. Sandridge paused in a little surprise at the lawyer's acuteness, and seemed to have some difficulty in framing a reply.

"Yes," she said at last; "I did n't come up these stairs just to tell you that it had rained. But I really do think you ought to know, and I'm sure there's nobody else to tell you, so I'm afraid I must be the one to do it."

She looked so grave that the lawyer became interested.

"I suppose it is in relation to the estate of my late client, Jacob Davenant," he suggested, to help her on.

66

Well, yes and no," said Mrs. Sandridge. You see it's this way. I do really believe Silas is in love."

"Oh!" said Mr. Golightly. "Not at all unlikely-not at all. Young blood, you know, Mrs. Sandridge, young blood. We must expect such things." And he smiled indulgently.

Mrs. Sandridge looked at the lawyer in horrified surprise.

"Why-why Mr. Golightly," she stammered, "don't you remember that he loses his money if he marries?"

The lawyer looked grave again. The conditions of Jacob Davenant's will had slipped his mind for a moment, but he was not going to confess to a woman that he could forget anything.

"Dear me, Mrs. Sandridge," he said. "You don't think it is as bad as that, do you? He surely is not thinking of marrying?"

Mrs. Sandridge did not know whether to be astonished or not.

"I'm afraid so," she said finally. "You see it's the new teacher, and she has n't been there six months yet. Silas is one of the trustees, and she came to him about getting settled, and fixing up the schoolhouse, and getting this and that for the children, and every little thing she could think of. O, I'm sure the hussy was setting her cap for him from the first; and what with picnics and parties and all, she's got him to a p'int where he's calling once or twice a week, and-and-O, I just know he'll go and make a fool of himself."

Mrs. Sandridge became so excited at this dreadful picture she had conjured up that she rose and walked about the office to compose herself.

"You think, then, Mrs. Sandridge, that she is setting her cap, as you say, for the money rather than for the man?"

"Why, of course, that's what she's after," said Mrs. Sandridge spitefully. "Not but what Silas is a likely young fellow, but she's heard he's rich, and I'm sure that it's nothing else; and I'm afraid that she'll get him and the law will take his money away, and they'll be miserable."

Mrs. Sandridge mentioned the law with awe as some voracious creature that would swallow up the fortune and plunge Silas into poverty.

"It would doubtless be my duty as trustee and executor to turn the property over to Miss Stannard in such event," said Mr. Golightly. "But we will hope it may not come to that. Has he said anything of his intentions?'