nished he sat
in the living room, the lamp still unlighted, smoking and thinking.

And in her chamber Caroline, too, sat thinking--not altogether of the
man she loved and who loved her. She thought of him, of course; but
there was something else, an idea, a suspicion, which over and over
again she dismissed as an utter impossibility, but which returned as
often.

The Stock Exchange seat had been a part of her father's estate, a
part of her own and Steve's inheritance. Sylvester had told her so,
distinctly. And such a seat was valuable; she remembered her brother
reading in the paper that one had recently sold for ninety thousand
dollars. How could Captain Warren have retained such a costly part of
the forfeited estate in his possession? For it was in his possession;
he was going to give it to her brother when the latter left college. But
how could he have obtained it? Not by purchase; for, as she knew, he was
not worth half of ninety thousand dollars. Surely the creditor, the man
who had, as was his right, seized all Rodgers Warren's effects, would
not have left that and taken the rest. Not unless he was a curiously
philanthropic and eccentric person. Who was he? Who was this mysterious
man her father had defrauded? She had never wished to know before; now
she did. And the more she pondered, the more plausible her suspicion
became. It was almost incredible, it seemed preposterous; but, as she
went back, in memory, over the events since her father's death and the
disclosure of his astonishing will, little bits of evidence, little
happenings and details came to light, trifles in themselves, but all
fitting in together, like pieces of an inscription in mosaic, to spell
the truth.

CHAPTER XXII

November weather on Cape Cod is what Captain Elisha described as
"considerable chancey." "The feller that can guess it two days ahead
of time," he declared, "is wastin' his talents; he could make a livin'
prophesyin' most anything, even the market price of cranberries." When
Caroline, Sylvester, and the captain reached South Denboro after what
seemed, to the two unused to the leisurely winter schedule of the
railroad, an interminable journey from Fall River, the girl thought
she had never seen a more gloomy sky or a more forbidding scene.
Gray clouds, gray sea, brown bare fields; the village of white or
gray-shingled houses set, for the most part, along the winding main
street; the elms and silver-leaf poplars waving ba