ted_.

"Now, Florian," said Judge Blodgett, as they sat in Amidon's rooms,
"search yourself, and see if you don't feel a dreamy sense of
familiarity here in these rooms--the feeling that the long-lost heir
has when he crawls down the chimney as a sweep and finds himself in his
ancestral halls, you know."

"Never saw a thing here before," said Amidon, "and have no feeling
except surprise at the elegance about me, and a sneaking fear that
Brassfield may come in at any time and eject us. The fellow had taste,
anyhow!"

"Didn't you recognize anything," went on the judge, "in the streets or
buildings or the general landscape?"

"Nothing."

"Nor in the young lady? Wasn't there a sort of--of music in her voice,
like long-forgotten melodies, you understand--like what the said heir
notices in after years when his mother blunders on to him?"

"Well," said Florian, "her voice is musical, if that's what you
mean--musical and low, and reminds one of the sounds made by a great
master playing his heart out in the lowest notes of the flute; but it
is so far from being familiar to me that I'm quite sure I never heard a
voice like it before."

The judge strode up and down the room perturbedly.

"Why," said he, "it's enough to make a man's hair stand!"

"It does," said Amidon. "What can I say to her?"

"You haven't a piece of property here," said the judge, going on with
the matters uppermost in his mind, "that you could successfully
maintain replevin for, if anybody converted it. They'd ask you on
cross-examination if it was yours, and you'd have to say you didn't
know! And there's a world of property, I find. They could take it all
away from you without your knowing it, if they only knew. Have you any
course mapped out--any plans?"

"To a certain extent, yes," said Florian. "I shall call on her this
evening."

"For help, yes," said the judge. "She must bring Brassfield up, so
that we can find out about some property matters."

"I don't mean that," said Amidon. "I must call on Miss
Waldron--Elizabeth."

"And neglect----" began the judge.

"Everything," said Florian firmly. "This is something that concerns my
honor as a gentleman. While it remains in its present state, I can't
bother with these property matters. Have I an office?"

"Have you!" said the judge. "Well, just wait until you see them."

"And an office force?"

"Confidential manager named Stevens, as per the notes,"; said Judge
Blodgett. "