d most
of the talking, and it was some time before I found out who was with
him. But after a while the other man spoke, and I knew it was Ethan."

"Ethan Wormbury you mean?" asked Leopold.

"Yes my uncle Ethan, that keeps the Island Hotel. Your father's new
house, Le, has scared him half out of his wits. I can't remember half I
heard them say; but the substance of it was, that if your father don't
pay his interest money on the very first day of July, the old man means
to foreclose the mortgage just as quick as the law will let him. That's
the upshot of all that was said."

"That's too bad!" exclaimed Leopold, indignantly.

"Just what I thought, and that's the reason why I wanted to tell you.
Squire Moses said your father's furniture was mortgaged, and that would
have to be sold too. The plan of the old hunks is to get the hotel, and
put Ethan into it as landlord. If he can't do it this summer, he means
to do it as soon as he can. He thought if he got the house, he could buy
the furniture, and set Ethan up by the middle of July, or the first of
August."

"It's a mean trick," muttered Leopold.

"That's what I say; but it isn't any meaner than a thousand other things
the old man does. Only think of his turning his son's wife, with three
children, out of house and home! But you can tell your father all about
it, Le, and perhaps he may be able to get an anchor out to windward,"
continued Stumpy, whose sympathy for his friend was hardly less than his
fear for his mother's future.

"I'm much obliged to you for telling me, Stumpy; but I don't know that
my father will be able to do anything to help himself, desperate as the
case is," added Leopold.

"I hope he will."

"So do I but I have my doubts. Father said to-day that he had six calls
for every dollar he got. He has mortgaged everything, so that he can't
raise anything more. He said there was money enough in the large cities;
that they had picked up after the first blow of the war, and some men
were getting rich faster than ever; but down here everything was at a
stand-still; no business, and no money. The rich folks will come down
to the hotel by and by; and father says a good week, with the Sea Cliff
House full, would set him all right; but he can't expect to do anything
more than pay expenses, and hardly that, till the middle of July."

"It's a hard case, and Squire Moses knows it. He said if he couldn't get
the house on the first of July payment, he was afrai