Fred is older than I am, and he is an
exceptional brother. On the day he came home from his wedding trip, I
went down with my traps on a hansom, in accordance with a prearranged
schedule. Fred and Edith met me inside the door.

"Here's your latch-key, Jack," Fred said, as he shook hands. "Only one
stipulation--remember we are strangers in the vicinity and try to get
home before the neighbors are up. We have our reputations to think of."

"There is no hour for breakfast," Edith said, as she kissed me. "You
have a bath of your own, and don't smoke in the drawing-room."

Fred was always a lucky devil.

I had been there now for six years. I had helped to raise two young
Knoxes--bully youngsters, too: the oldest one could use boxing-gloves
when he was four--and the finest collie pup in our end of the state. I
wanted to raise other things--the boys liked pets--but Edith was like
all women, she didn't care for animals.

I had a rabbit-hutch built and stocked in the laundry, and a dove-cote
on the roof. I used the general bath, and gave up my tub to a young
alligator I got in Florida, and every Sunday the youngsters and I had a
great time trying to teach it to do tricks. I have always taken it a
little hard that Edith took advantage of my getting the measles from
Billy, to clear out every animal in the house. She broke the news to me
gently, the day the rash began to fade, maintaining that, having lost
one cook through the alligator escaping from his tub and being mistaken,
in the gloom of the back-stairs, for a rubber boot, and picked up under
the same misapprehension, she could not risk another cook.

On the day that Margery Fleming came to me about her father, I went home
in a state of mixed emotion. Dinner was not a quiet meal: Fred and I
talked politics, generally, and as Fred was on one side and I on the
other there was always an argument on.

"What about Fleming?" I asked at last, when Fred had declared that in
these days of corruption, no matter what the government was, he was
"forninst" it. "Hasn't he been frightened into reform?"

"Bad egg," he said, jabbing his potato as if it had been a politician,
"and there's no way to improve a bad egg except to hold your nose.
That's what the public is doing; holding its nose."

"Hasn't he a daughter?" I asked casually.

"Yes--a lovely girl, too," Edith assented. "It is his only redeeming
quality."

"Fleming is a rascal, daughter or no daughter," Fred persisted. "Eve