f _you_ believe it; and your
father knew my father better than any one else. I was afraid I didn't
make Louise understand how much I felt that, and how much Adeline did.
It was hard to tell her, without seeming to thank you for something that
was no more than my father's due. But we do feel it, both of us; and I
would like your father to know it. I don't blame him for what he is
going to do. It's necessary to establish my father's innocence to have
the trial. I was very unjust to your father that first day, when I
thought he believed those things against papa. We appreciate his
kindness in every way, but we shall not get any lawyer to defend us."

Matt was helplessly silent before this wild confusion of perfect trust
and hopeless error. He would not have known where to begin to set her
right; he did not see how he could speak a word without wounding her
through her love, her pride.

She hurried on, walking swiftly, as if to keep up with the rush of her
freed emotions. "We are not afraid but that it will come out so that our
father's name, who was always so perfectly upright, and so good to every
one, will be cleared, and those who have accused him so basely will be
punished as they deserve."

She had so wholly misconceived the situation and the character of the
impending proceedings that it would not have been possible to explain it
all to her; but he could not leave her in her error, and he made at last
an effort to enlighten her.

"I think my father was right in advising you to see a lawyer. It won't
be a question of the charges against your father's integrity, but of his
solvency. The proceedings will be against his estate; and you mustn't
allow yourselves to be taken at a disadvantage."

She stopped. "What do we care for the estate, if his good name isn't
cleared up?"

"I'm afraid--I'm afraid," Matt entreated, "that you don't exactly
understand."

"If my father never meant to keep the money, then the trial will show,"
the girl returned.

"But a lawyer--indeed you ought to see a lawyer!--could explain how such
a trial would leave that question where it was. It wouldn't be the case
against your father, but against _you_."

"Against us? What do they say we have done?"

Matt could have laughed at her heroic misapprehension of the affair, if
it had not been for the pity of it. "Nothing! Nothing! But they can take
everything here that belonged to your father--everything on the place,
to satisfy his creditors.