"Now it is the parlour," she said, gaily, waving her hand toward the old piano, the bookcases, and the familiar bric-a-brac on the mantel.

"But shut your eyes a minute, and--_abracadabra!_ it's the dining-room." As she spoke, she whisked a white cloth on the old claw-footed mahogany table, and, throwing open a closet door, displayed the orderly rows of china.

"We'll not have much for supper to-night, but I'm bound it shall be set out in style to celebrate our house-warming; so, Mack, if you have any legs left to toddle on, I wish you'd run out and get me a handful of purple asters to put in this gla.s.s bowl. I am glad that it wasn't broken. Some kind but agitated friend pitched it out of the window into the geranium bed."

She rattled along gaily, with a furtive side-glance at Alec. He had had nothing to say to her since her outburst up-stairs, and now, ignoring her pleasantries, he walked into the kitchen in his most dignified manner.

"Is there anything more you want me to do, Aunt Eunice?" he asked.

Finding that there was nothing just then, he went out to the side porch opening off the room which was to be used as both dining-room and parlour. He had hung the hammock there a little while before, and he threw himself into it with a sigh of relief. Swinging back and forth in the shelter of the vines, the feeling of comfort began to steal over him that comes with the relaxation of tired muscles. The rattle of dishes and aroma of hot coffee coming out to him were pleasantly suggestive to his healthy young appet.i.te.

He closed his eyes, not intending to go to sleep, but the hammock stopped swinging almost instantly, and he did not hear the footsteps going past him a few minutes later, nor his Aunt Eunice's surprised cry of welcome as a tall, bearded stranger knocked at the door.

The continuous murmur of voices finally roused him, and he lay there blinking and listening, trying to recognize the deep ba.s.s voice that laughed and talked so familiarly with his aunt.

"The Lord has certainly sent you, d.i.c.k," Alec heard her say in a tremulous tone, and then he knew instantly who had come.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'THE LORD HAS CERTAINLY SENT YOU, d.i.c.k.'"]

All his life he had heard of d.i.c.k Willis, one of the many boys his grandfather had befriended and taken into the shelter of his home for awhile. d.i.c.k had lived five years in the old house that had just burned, when Eunice and Sally Macklin were children; and all the stories of their school days were full of their foster-brother's mischievous sayings and doings.

That the harum-scarum boy had given place to this middle-aged, successful business man, with the deep voice and big whiskers, was hard for Alec to realize, for in all Miss Eunice's reminiscences he had kept the perennial prankishness of youth. But now Alec, listening, learned the changes that had taken place since the man's last visit to his home. He had thought every year that he would come back for another visit, he told Miss Eunice, but he had put it off from season to season, hard pressed by the demands of business, and now it was too late for him to ever see the old homestead again. He had seen an account of the fire in a paper which he read on the train on his way East, and he decided to stop his journey long enough to run over to the old place for a few hours, and see if she did not need his help. He wanted her to feel that he stood ready to give it to the extent of his power, and expected her to call upon him as freely as if he were a real brother.

Then it was that Miss Eunice's tremulous voice exclaimed again: "The Lord has certainly sent you, d.i.c.k! I have been worried for weeks over Alec's future. There is no outlook here in the village for him. If you could only get him a position somewhere--" She paused, the tears in her eyes. Alec listened breathlessly for his answer.

"Why didn't you write me before this, Eunice? My business, travelling for a wholesale shoe house, takes me over a wide territory and gives me a large acquaintance. I am sure that I can get him into something or other very soon. You know that I would do anything for Sally's boy, and when you add to that the fact that he is Alexander Macklin's grandson, and I owe everything I am under heaven to that man, you may know that I'd leave no stone unturned to repay a little of his kindness to me."

Alec's heart gave a great throb of hope. The good cheer of the hearty voice inspired him with a courage he had not felt in weeks. There was a patter of bare feet down the garden path, and, peering out between the vines, Alec saw one of the neighbour's boys coming in with a big dish covered carefully with a napkin.

"It's fried chicken," announced the boy, with a grin, as Alec went down the step to meet him. "Mother said to eat it while it was hot.

She knew you all would be too tired to cook much to-night."

Without waiting to hear Alec's thanks, he scampered down the path again and squeezed through the gap in the fence made by a missing picket. Alec carried the dish round the house to the kitchen, where Philippa was putting the finishing touches to the supper, in her aunt's stead.

"Did you know that Uncle d.i.c.k has come?" she asked, joyfully. "Oh, how good of Mrs. Pine to send the chicken! We didn't have anything for supper but coffee and rolls and eggs. He's certainly bringing good things in his wake. How delicious that chicken does smell! Let's take it as a good omen, Alec, a forerunner of better days. He'll surely get you out of your slough of despond."

"Who, Flip? The chicken or Uncle d.i.c.k?" asked Alec, in his old jesting way, giving one of her long braids a tweak as he pa.s.sed. A heavy load seemed to lift itself from Philippa's heart at this sign of Alec's return to his merry old self. All during supper she kept glancing at him, for, absorbed in their guest's interesting reminiscences, he seemed to have forgotten the grievances he had brooded over so long, and laughed and joked as he had not done for weeks.

To their great regret, Uncle d.i.c.k had to leave that night. Alec walked to the station with him, feeling that he was being subjected to a very close cross-examination as to his capabilities and preferences. The train was late, and as they sat in the waiting-room, the man fell into a profound silence, his hands thrust into his pockets and his brows drawn together in deep thought.

Finally he said: "You want to be a banker, like your grandfather.

Well, I can't manage that, my boy. My influence doesn't lie in that direction. The best I can do is to get you in with the firm that manufactures all the shoes I sell. It is a big concern. The general manager of the factory at Salesbury is a good friend of mine, and I happen to know he is on the lookout for a reliable young fellow to put in training as his a.s.sistant. He is constantly giving somebody a trial, but n.o.body measures up to his requirements. Whoever takes it must go through a regular apprenticeship in the factory and learn the business from the ground up. According to his ideas, you'd not be fitted until you'd tried your hand at every piece of machinery in the factory, and knew how to turn out a pair of shoes from the raw leather. The wages will be small at first. Some of the duties are disagreeable, many of the requirements exacting, but promotion is rapid, and probably by the end of the year you'd be in the office, learning to take an oversight of the different departments; that is, if you had proved there was good stuff in you. If money is what you are after, this opening is better a thousand times than anything the village bank could give you in years, and in my opinion it's just as respectable a calling to handle leather as lucre. You'll have to work and work hard."

"I don't mind how hard the work is," answered Alec. "I hate to give up the one thing that has been my ambition all my life, but I have come to the point where I'd do anything honest to get a place somewhere out of this town. I'd even scrub floors. You don't know what I've been through this summer, Uncle d.i.c.k. Of course, you know about my father?"

He asked the question with such bitterness of tone that his listener scanned his face intently, then sympathetically.

"Well, I must get away from that," Alec continued. "It's an awful handicap. The thought of it made me desperate at times. If they should hear about him in Salesbury and turn me down on his account--well, I'd just give up! I couldn't stand any more than I have already suffered on his account."

There was no answer for a minute, then the deep voice answered, cheerily: "Alec, your grandmother Macklin once told me that when she was a very small child she went to visit her grandmother; quite a remote ancestor of yours that would be, wouldn't it? For some reason, she was put to sleep in a trundle-bed in the old lady's room, and along late in the night she was awakened by a very earnest voice. She sat up in the little trundle-bed to listen, and there was the old saint on her knees, praying for--now, what do you suppose? For 'all her posterity to the latest generation!' She said she didn't understand then what the words meant, but years afterward, when she held her first baby in her arms, they came back to her with a feeling of awe, to think that prayers uttered for him, long years before he was born, were still working to his blessing.

"It is the same with you, Alec. Evil influences were set afloat by your father's crime that will undoubtedly work against you many a time, but you must remember all the good that lies on the other hand to counteract them. Even your great-great-grandmother's prayers must count for something in your behalf. I remember that Alexander Macklin planted an apple orchard after he was eighty years old. He never lived to gather even its first harvest, but you have been enjoying it all your life. He did a thousand unrecorded kindnesses that brought him no returns seemingly, but 'bread cast upon the waters' does come back after many days, my boy, every time. And you will be eating the results of that scattering all your life. The little that I may be able to do for you will only be the result of kindness he showed me, and which I could not repay, but am glad now to pa.s.s it on to his grandson. Don't grow bitter because of your father, and say that fate has handicapped you. That admission of itself will sap your courage and go far toward defeating you. Say, instead, '_The Eternal Goodness_ will more than compensate for the evil that this one man has wrought me.' Then go on, trusting in that, and win in spite of everything. The harder the struggle the more praise to the victor, you know."

The whistle of the approaching train brought his little sermon to a close, and, seizing his satchel, he started hurriedly to the door.

"I'll see the manager in a few days," he continued, hurriedly. "I have only a few stops to make this time on my way to Salesbury.

Probably I'll have something definite to write you the last of the week. Good-bye and good luck to you!" He shook hands heartily, swung himself up on the platform, and disappeared into the car.

Philippa was waiting in the hammock with a shawl over her head when Alec returned. The moonlight nights were chilly, but she could not bear to go inside until she heard the result of their conversation.

"Oh, Alec," she exclaimed, as he came up wide awake and glowing from his walk and his hopeful interview, "wasn't it just like a lovely story to have the traditional uncle drop down long enough to restore the family fortunes and then disappear again?"

"Yes, you're a good prophet," he laughed. "I drifted on to my island when I least expected it, and in the middle of my darkest night.

Salesbury is four hundred miles from here, Flip, and we sha'n't see each other often, so if it will be any comfort to you, you may say, 'I told you so,' three times a day, from now on until I leave."

CHAPTER III.

Philippa, coming home from school one afternoon, late in September, loitered at the gate for a few more words with the girls who had walked that far with her. Sometimes the little group lingered there until nearly sundown, between the laburnum bushes and hollyhocks of the old garden, but to-day, Alec's impatient whistle from an upper window signalled her. He waved a letter toward her, calling, excitedly, "It's come, Flip! It's come! I'm to start in the morning.

I'm packing my trunk now."

With a hurried good-bye to the girls at the gate, Philippa rushed up the stairs to her brother's room. The bureau drawers had all been emptied on the bed, and every chair was full.

"Here's some things that need b.u.t.tons," he announced, as she came in.

"Aunt Eunice is pressing my best suit, and Mack has gone down-town after the shoes that I left to be half-soled. I'll have to rush, for the letter says to come at once. I didn't suppose they'd be in such a hurry. They're hustlers, I guess."

His haste was so contagious that Philippa ran into the next room for her sewing-basket, without waiting to take off her hat, and sitting down on the floor beside the window began to sew on b.u.t.tons as fast as she asked questions. She always had plenty to say to Alec, and now that the time for conversation was limited to a few short hours, she could not talk fast enough.

Presently the click of the gate made her look out. "Here comes Mack,"

she said. "Your shoes are wrapped in a newspaper, and he's so busy reading something on it that he doesn't know where he is going. Look out, snail!" she called; "you'll b.u.mp into the house in a minute if you are not careful!"

The boy came slowly up the stairs still spelling out the paragraph that interested him.

"Alec," he said, pausing in the doorway, "what's a green goods man?

This says that a gang of 'em were arrested in New York. The detectives traced them by a letter one of them left here in Ridgeville at the hotel. Think of that! Jonas Clark is the man's real name, alias H-u-m-p-h," he spelled, "Humphrey (I guess it is) Long."

Alec s.n.a.t.c.hed the knotty bundle and glanced at the paragraph so eagerly that Philippa looked at him in surprise. She was still more surprised to see a deep flush spread over his face, as he tore the newspaper off the shoes and glanced at the date. Then he dropped it on the bed and began to fumble for something in the bottom of his trunk, saying, carelessly, "Oh, green goods men are just fellows who rope people in to buy counterfeit money. Here, Mack, you'll not have a chance to run many more errands for me. Trot down to Aunt Eunice with these neckties, please, and ask her to press them for me while she's in the business."

As soon as Mack disappeared, Alec caught up the paper again. "Flip,"

he said, in an impressive voice, after his second reading, "do you remember the night of the fire I was to meet a man at the hotel and make the final arrangement with him for taking a position he had offered me?"

Philippa nodded.

"Well, that is the man; Humphrey Long. Think of what I have escaped.

From what he said about his sure scheme for making money and making it easy, I know now that is what he meant; but I never suspected such a thing then. He was the smoothest talker I ever saw, and was as gentlemanly and well dressed as the minister. And such a way as he had! He could almost make a body believe that black was white.

Suppose I had gone off with him. Whillikens! but I would be in hot water now! Everybody would have said, 'Only a chip off the old block.

Just what might have been expected with such a father.'"