mortgages and savings
accounts as there were dollars! This made work. There were papers to
sort and list, to file and to schedule--clerical work in abundance. It
interfered with the more important business of courtship, but even in
this respect it was not without a certain value.

"Who's going to get all this money?" Sarah asked, one morning after she
had been listing mortgages until her head ached with the sight of
figures and descriptions. "Does Mary Beatty get it all?"

"Not unless we find a will somewhere. Everybody thought Solon's
niece--which is Mary Beatty--would get the whole estate. Solon intended
it should go that way, and the Lord knows she's worked for him and
nursed him and coddled him enough to deserve it. Gave her whole life up
to the old codger ... But we can't find a will, and so she won't get but
half. The rest goes to Solon's nephew, Farley Curtis ... under the
statute of descent and distribution, you know," he finished, learnedly.

"Farley Curtis.... I never heard of him."

"He's never been here--at least not for years. But he'll be along now.
We're due to see him soon."

"Correct," said a voice from the door, which had opened silently. In it
stood a young man of dress and demeanor not indigenous to Coldriver.
"You're due to see Farley Curtis--so you behold him. Look me over
carefully. I was due--therefore I arrive." The young man laughed
pleasantly, as if he intended his words to be regarded as whimsical,
yet, somehow, Bob felt the whimsicality to be surface deep; that Curtis
was a young man with much confidence in himself, who felt that if he
were due he would inevitably arrive.

"Mr. Allen, I suppose," said Curtis, extending his hand. "I am told you
are handling the legal affairs of my late uncle's estate."

Sarah Pound eyed the newcomer, and as the young men shook hands compared
them, to Bob Allen's disadvantage. To inexperience any comparison must
be to Bob's disadvantage, for Curtis was handsome, dressed with taste,
and gifted with a worldly certainty of manner and an undeniable charm.
Sarah had never encountered all these attributes in a single individual.
She drew on her reading of fiction and knew at once that she was in the
presence of that wonderful creature she had seen described so
frequently--a gentleman. As for Bob Allen, he was big, rugged, careless
of dress, kindly, without pretense of polish.... And besides, to
Curtis's advantage there attached to him a certain literary glamo