"Then we will get married," said he, and looked so beaming, that Frank shook him cordially by the hand.

"But where is Huckins?" the lawyer now inquired. "I didn't see him down below."

"He is chewing his nails in the kitchen. He is like a dog with a bone; you cannot get him to leave the house for a moment."

"I must see him," said Frank, and went down the back stairs to the place where he had held his previous interview with this angry and disappointed man.

At first sight of the young lawyer Huckins flushed deeply, but he soon grew pale and obsequious, as if he had held bitter communing with himself through the last thirty-six hours, and had resolved to restrain his temper for the future in the presence of the man who understood him.

But he could not help a covert sneer from creeping into his voice.

"Have you found the heirs?" he asked, bowing with ill-mannered grace, and pushing forward the only chair there was in the room.

"I shall find them when I need them," rejoined Frank. "Fortunes, however small, do not usually go begging."

"Then you have not found them?" the other declared, a hard glitter of triumph shining in his sinister eye.

"I have not brought them with me," acknowledged the lawyer, warily.

"Perhaps, then, you won't," suggested Huckins, while he seemed to grow instantly at least two inches in stature. "If they are not in Marston where are they? Dead! And that leaves me the undisputed heir to all my sister's savings."

"I do not believe them dead," protested Frank.

"Why?" Huckins half smiled, half snarled.

"Some token of the fact would have come to you. You are not in a strange land or in unknown parts; you are living in the old homestead where this lost sister of yours was reared. You would have heard if she had died, at least so it strikes an unprejudiced mind."

"Then let it strike yours to the contrary," snapped out his angry companion. "When she went away it was in anger and with the curse of her father ringing in her ears. Do you see that porch?" And Huckins pointed through the cracked windows to a decayed pair of steps leading from the side of the house. "It was there she ran down on her way out. I see her now, though forty years have pa.s.sed, and I, a little fellow of six, neither understood nor appreciated what was happening. My father stood in the window above, and he cried out: 'Don't come back! You have chosen your way, now go in it. Let me never see you nor hear from you again.'

And we never did, never! And now you tell me we would have heard if she had died. You don't know the heart of folks if you say that. Harriet cut herself adrift that day, and she knew it."

"Yet you were acquainted with the fact that she went to Marston."

The indignant light in the brother's eye settled into a look of cunning.

"Oh," he acknowledged carelessly, "we heard so at the time, when everything was fresh. But we heard nothing more, nothing."

"Nothing?" Frank repeated. "Not that she had married and had had children?"

"No," was the dogged reply. "My sister up there," and Huckins jerked his hand towards the room where poor Mrs. Wakeham lay, "surmised things, but she didn't know anything for certain. If she had she might have sent for these folks long ago. She had time enough in the last ten years we have been living in this hole together."

"But," Etheridge now ventured, determined not to be outmatched in cunning, "you say she was penurious, too penurious to live comfortably or to let you do so."

Huckins shrugged his shoulders and for a moment looked balked; then he cried: "The closest women have their whims. If she had known any such folks to have been living as you have named, she would have sent for them."

"If you had let her," suggested Frank.

Huckins turned upon him and his eye flashed. But he very soon cringed again and attempted a sickly smile, which completed the disgust the young lawyer felt for him.

"If I had let her," he repeated; "I, who pined for companionship or anything which would have put a good meal into my mouth! You do not know me, sir; you are prejudiced against me because I want my earnings, and a little comfort in my old age."

"If I am prejudiced against you, it is yourself who has made me so,"

returned the other. "Your conduct has not been of a nature to win my regard, since I have had the honor of your acquaintance."

"And what has yours been, worming, as you have, into my sister's confidence----"

But here Frank hushed him. "We will drop this," said he. "You know me, and I think I know you. I came to give you one last chance to play the man by helping me to find your relatives. I see you have no intention of doing so, so I will now proceed to find them without you."

"If they exist," he put in.

"Certainly, if they exist. If they do not----"

"What then?"

"I must have proofs to that effect. I must know that your sister left no heirs but yourself."

"That will take time," he grumbled. "I shall be kept weeks out of my rights."

"The Surrogate will see that you do not suffer."

He shuddered and looked like a fox driven into his hole.

"It is shameful, shameful!" he cried. "It is nothing but a conspiracy to rob me of my own. I suppose I shall not be allowed to live in my own house." And his eyes wandered greedily over the rafters above him.

"Are you sure that it is yours?"

"Yes, yes, d.a.m.n you!" But the word had been hasty, and he immediately caught Frank's sleeve and cringed in contrition. "I beg your pardon," he cried, "perhaps we had better not talk any longer, for I have been too tried for patience. They will not even leave me alone in my grief," he whined, pointing towards the rooms full, as I have said, of jostling neighbors and gossips.

"It will be quiet enough after the funeral," Frank a.s.sured him.

"Oh! oh! the funeral!" he groaned.

"Is it going to be too extravagant?" Frank insinuated artfully.

Huckins gave the lawyer a look, dropped his eyes and mournfully shook his head.

"The poor woman would not have liked it," he muttered; "but one must be decent towards one's own blood."

VII.

THE WAY OPENS.

Frank succeeded in having Mr. d.i.c.key appointed as Custodian of the property, then he went back to Marston.

"Good-evening, Doctor; what a nest of roses you have here for a bachelor," was his jovial cry, as he entered the quaint little house, in which Sellick had now established himself. "I declare, when you told me I should always find a room here, I did not realize what a temptation you were offering me. And in sight----" He paused, changing color as he drew back from the window to which he had stepped,----"of the hills," he somewhat awkwardly added.

Edgar, who had watched the movements of his friend from under half lowered lids, smiled dryly.