feet. "It's that good-for-nothing piano
tuner, Miss Mary," he told her reluctantly. "I reckon you don't know much
about him. He's been coming around a lot since you've been away. He's
been sticking to Miss Paula like a leech, right up to the day your father
got sick. Then he didn't come any more and I thought we were done with
him. But he came back to-day and asked me if Miss Paula was up in the
music room. He'd have gone right straight up to that room where Doctor
John is fighting for his life if I hadn't stopped him."

"Did you tell him father was ill?" she asked, and was astonished at the
flare of passion this evoked from him.

"It ain't no business of his, Miss Mary," he said grimly. "Nothing about
this family is any business of his." Then as if anxious to prevent the
significance of that from reaching her, he hurried on. "He was so sure
Miss Paula wanted to see him, I told him if he'd wait, I'd inform her
that he was here. I've done told her and she said he was to go away. She
couldn't be bothered with him. And then she said to me with tears in her
eyes, 'I wish I'd never seen him, Nat.' Those were her words, Miss Mary.
'I wish my eyes had never beheld him!' That's what she said to me not a
minute ago. I'm going down to fix him so she'll never see him again."

"You needn't go down," Mary said decisively. "I'll see him myself."

She had got home that morning summoned by a telegram, one of those
carefully composed encouraging telegrams that are a simple distillate of
despair. During the three days it had taken to accomplish her journey
from the ranch, she had gradually relinquished all hope of finding her
father alive. Rush, who met the train, had reassured her. It was a bad
case of double pneumonia. They were expecting the crisis within
twenty-four hours. The doctors gave him an even chance, but the boy was
more confident. "They don't know dad," he said. "He isn't going to die."

On the way back to the house he had outlined the facts for her. His
father had driven out to the farm in his open roadster a week ago Sunday
to see how he and Graham were getting on--driven out alone, though he had
spoken the night before, over the telephone, of bringing Paula with him.
For some reason that hadn't come off. Dad had seemed well enough, then,
though rather tired and dispirited. The day had begun as if it meant to
be fine, for a change, but it had turned off cold again and begun to rain
while they were walking over the pla