n. "And that is what Uncle Starkweather is
afraid of. He fears it will get into the papers again if I make any stir
about it, and then there will be a scandal."

"With his name connected with it?"

"Yes."

"He's dreadfully timid for his own good name; isn't he?" remarked Dud,
sarcastically. "Well, first of all, I'll get the date of the occurrence
and then search the files of all the city papers. The reporters usually
get such matters pretty straight. To misstate such business troubles is
skating on the thin ice of libel, and newspapers are careful.

"Well, when we have all the facts before us--what people surmised, even,
and how it looked to 'the man on the street,' as the saying is--then we'll
know better how to go ahead.

"Are you willing to leave the matter to me, Helen?"

"What did I give you a retainer for?" demanded the girl from Sunset Ranch,
smiling.

"True," he replied, his own eyes dancing; "but there is a saying among
lawyers that the feminine client does not really come to a lawyer for
advice; rather, she pays him to listen to her talk."

"Isn't that horrid of him?" cried Jess, unable to keep still any longer.
"As though we girls talked any more than the men do. I should say not!"

But Helen agreed to let Dud govern her future course in trying to untangle
the web of circumstance that had driven her father out of New York years
before. As Dud said, somebody was guilty, and that somebody was the person
they must find.

It encouraged Helen mightily to have someone talk this way about the
matter. A solution of the problem seemed so imminent after she parted from
the fledgling lawyer and his sister, that Helen determined to hasten to
their conclusion certain plans she had made, before she returned to the
West.

For Helen could not remain here. Her uncle's home was not the refined
household that dear dad had thought, in which she would be sheltered and
aided in improving herself.

"I might as well take board at the Zoo and live in the bear's den,"
declared Helen, perhaps a little harsh in her criticism. "There are no
civilizing influences in _that_ house. I'd never get a particle of
'culture' there. I'd rather associate with Sing, and Jo-Rab, and the boys,
and Hen Billings."

Her experience in the great city had satisfied Helen that its life was not
for her. Some things she had learned, it was true; but most of them were
unpleasant things.

"I'd rather hire some lady to come out to Sunset and liv