inued looking at him steadily for
a long space. He knew she was thinking; and he was wondering what was
passing through that shrewd old brain, when she remarked:

"By the way, Larry, I just remembered what you told me of that old Sing
Sing friend--Joe Ellison. Have you heard from him recently?"

"He's out, and he's working where I am."

"Yes? What's he doing?"

"He's working there as a gardener."

Again she was silent a space, her sunken eyes steady With thought. Then
she said:

"From the time he was twenty till he was thirty I knew Joe Ellison
well--better than I've ever told you. He knew your mother when she was
a girl, Larry. I wish you'd ask him to come in to see me. As soon as he
can manage it."

Larry promised. His grandmother said no more about Maggie, and presently
Larry bade her good-night and made his cautious way, ever on the lookout
for danger, to where he had left his roadster, and thence safely out to
Cedar Crest. But the Duchess sat for hours exactly as he had left her,
her accounts unheeded, thinking, thinking, thinking over an utterly
impossible possibility that had first presented itself faintly to her
several days before. She did not see how the thing could be; and yet
somehow it might be, for many a strange thing did happen in this border
world where for so long she had lived. When finally she went to bed she
slept little; her busy conjectures would not permit sleep. And though
the next day she went about her shop seemingly as usual, she was still
thinking.

That night Joe Ellison came. They met as though they had last seen each
other but yesterday.

"Good-evening, Joe."

"Glad to see you, Duchess."

She held out to him a box of the best cigars, which she had bought
against his coming, for she had remembered Joe Ellison's once fastidious
taste regarding tobacco. He lit one, and they fell into the easy silence
of old friends, taking up their friendship exactly where it had been
broken off. As a matter of fact, Joe Ellison might have been her
son-in-law but for her own firm attitude. He had known her daughter very
much better than her words to Larry the previous evening had indicated.
Not only had Joe known her while a girl down here, but much later he
had learned in what convent she was going to school and there had been
surreptitious love-making despite convent rules and boundaries--till the
Duchess had learned what was going on. She had had a square out-and-out
talk with Joe; the roma