ara?"

"Wandered," said Clara, "and to so many places that I can't remember
them. Then you found oil, or traces of it--I can't get that very
plainly--on a farm at Bunn's Ferry, Pennsylvania; and bought an option
on the farm. Then you opened an office in Bellevale, and have been
there in the oil business ever since.

"How's he been doin' financially?" interjected the judge.

"He has made a fortune," said Clara. "I believe him to be one of the
principal men of the town, socially and in a business way. He didn't
tell me this, but we think the circumstances seem to indicate it."

"Te saircumstances," said the professor, filling a pause, "show it."

"How is it," said the judge, "that no one has ever heard of his
Bellevale career out in Hazelhurst, if he's so prominent? We read, out
there, and once in a while one of us goes outside the corporation."

"His name," said Madame le Claire, "in Bellevale is not Florian Amidon."

"What is it?" cried Amidon. "Tell it to me!"

Madame le Claire restrained him with a calm glance.

"It is Eugene Brassfield," said she.

"It is your own dotes," cried the professor gleefully, "your own
dicket, your own gorrespondence!"

Amidon was feeling in his breast-pocket for something. He withdrew his
hand, holding in it a letter, and looked from it to Madame le Claire
questioningly.

"Oh, yes!" said she, not quite in her usual manner, "it's yours. It's
from Miss Elizabeth Waldron, of Bellevale, your affianced wife."

"Aha!" said the judge. "Now will you get mad when I speak of a double
life? Engaged, hey?"

"I never saw the--the lady in my life," was the reply; "so how can I
be--can I be--engaged to her?"

"In te Amidon blane of gonsciousness," said the professor, "you are
stranchers. In te Brassfield pairsonality, you are:--_Gott im Himmel_,
you are stuck on her, stuck on her--not, Clara? Vas he not gracey?
Only Clara cut it short in te temonstration; but as a luffer, in te
Brassfield blane, you are vot you call hot stuff."

"You had better read the gentlemen your notes," said Madame le Claire
coldly. "And please excuse me. I hope to see you both again." And
with a sinuous bow, she swept from the room.

Blodgett, keenly analytical, lost no word of the professor's notes.
Florian sat with the letter from Miss Waldron in his hand, lost in
thought. Sometimes his face burned with blushes, sometimes it paled
with anxiety. His eyes ran over the letter full of sweet ardor