e girl commenced to say, when Bristles stopped her.

"Now, that isn't it at all, Sarah!" he declared, with vehemence; "your
pa is a sick man, and unless he gets a doctor soon you may lose him. So
I'd just pocket that pride of yours, and let the neighbors do what they
want. And if you've been fleeced by that shark of a Squire Lemington,
why, there are a lot of others in the same fix. I'd like to see them run
him out of town; but he owns a heap of property around Riverport, and
that would be hard to do, I suppose. Say, don't that coffee smell good
though; you know the kind to get, seems like."

"Johann Swain brought that over the last time he came," she replied,
somewhat confused on account of having to make the confession that they
were already indebted to another for favors.

When the coffee was done Fred came out and secured a cup of it for the
sick man; while Sarah sat down at the kitchen table to drink her
portion. Bristles was almost famishing for a taste, but he would not
have accepted the first drop, had it smelled twice as good.

After making the two as comfortable as possible, the two boys once more
prepared to start on their run toward home. Of course they must expect
to come in the very last of all, owing to all these delays; but it was
little they cared.

"Expect company before long," sang out Bristles, as, having shaken hands
with the sick man and Sarah, they turned to wave farewell to the girl,
standing in the open door, and with something approaching a smile on her
wan face.

Fred made a proposition before they had gone more than fifty yards.

"What's the use of our finishing, Bristles?" he remarked. "We're
hopelessly beaten right now. Suppose we head for home, and get busy
going around to speak to a few of our friends about these people here.
I want Doc. Temple to come out; and I know Flo will insist on it when
she hears about that poor girl."

"Three to one she comes with him; and that the buggy is crammed full of
all the good things they've got at home," asserted Bristles; "because
there never was a girl with a bigger heart than Flo."

Fred was of the same opinion himself, though he only nodded, and smiled.

"You see your father, and then drop in to talk it over with several
others," he went on to say. "Leave Judge Colon for me. I want to ask him
a few questions about what happened between Arnold Masterson and his
rich uncle, to make Sarah's father hate him so, and avoid Riverport in
the barg