"Bessie! Zara!" Miss Eleanor was calling from downstairs, and they ran
to answer the call.

"Come into the parlor," she said, as she heard them approaching.

They obeyed, and found her talking to a tall, good looking young man,
who smiled cheerfully at them.

"This is my cousin, Charlie Jamieson, the lawyer, girls," said Miss
Eleanor. "I've told him all about you, of course, and now he wants to
talk to you."

"I'm going to be your lawyer, you know," Charlie Jamieson explained.
"Girls like you don't have much use for a lawyer, as a rule, but I guess
you need one about as badly as anyone I can think of. So I'm going to
take the job, unless you know someone better."

"No, indeed," they chorused in answer, and both laughed when they saw
that he was joking.

"I wish about a thousand other people were as anxious as that to be my
clients. Then maybe I'd make enough money to pay my office rent."

"Don't you believe him, girls," said Eleanor, laughing, too. "He's one
of the smartest young lawyers in this town, and he's busy most of the
time, too. He always is, lately, when I want him to come to one of my
parties or anything like that."

"Well, let's be serious for a while," said Jamieson. "I'm going to try
to help your father out of his trouble, Zara, and I'm finding it pretty
hard, because he doesn't want to trust me, or tell me much of anything.
Perhaps you'll be able to do better."

Zara looked grave.

"I don't know much," she said. "But I do know this. My father used to
trust people, but they've treated him so badly that he's afraid to do it
any more. Like Farmer Weeks--I think' he trusted him."

"That's more than I'd do," said the lawyer, with a grin, "From all I've
heard of him I wouldn't trust him around the corner with a counterfeit
nickel--if I wanted it back. And--well, that sort of helps to get us
started, doesn't it? You know why your father's in trouble? It's because
they say he's been making bad money at that little house where you lived
in Hedgeville."

"He didn't!" said Zara. "I know he didn't!"

"Well, the district attorney--he's the one who has to be against your
father, you know--says that everyone in Hedgeville seems to think he
did. And he says that where there's so much smoke there must be some
fire; that if so many people think your father was crooked, they must be
right. I told him that was unfair, but he just laughed at me."

"You may have to be a witness, Zara," said Eleanor.

"A w