attorney, but not before Willa had
caught the significance with which he mentioned the hour. Twelve
o'clock had struck, indeed, as he had prophesied, for this latter-day
Cinderella, and the pumpkin coach had vanished. The story differed
only in that there was no fairy prince to find her once again; he had
vanished, too, stripped of his splendor, but before the magic hour.
Or, rather, he had never existed save in the exalted fancy of the girl
back there in Limasito!

Cinderella must pick up her slipper herself, and go forth into the
world.

CHAPTER XIX

THE VENDER OF TOMALES

After Starr Wiley's departure Mason North placed the documents in Willa's
hands, explaining each in turn and she forced herself to a stern
concentration on them that she might master every detail. Already she
was gathering her forces, although no definite purpose outlined itself in
the chaos of her thoughts. Only a blind, as yet unreasoning, repudiation
of the story to which she had just listened sprang full-grown to life
within her and the very strength of her conviction urged her to examine
well the evidence against herself.

It consisted of the marriage-certificate of Frank Hillery and Louise
Henson, dated December 12, 1895; the birth-certificate of Louise Francis
Hillery, October 3, 1897, several maps of the Flathead Lake territory
with trails marked upon them in red ink, the death-certificate of Frank
Hillery, dated April 16, 1916, and a huge sheet of foolscap paper
scrawled with labored characters in wavering lines. At the bottom two
signatures were appended, the first in the same painstaking hand as the
body of the document, but at the second Willa's breath caught again in
her throat and her eyes blurred.

The letters before her, in the same angular heavily down-stroked writing
she knew so well, formed the name of Gentleman Geoff, but a word had been
added; one that she had never seen or heard before. Abercrombie!
Gentleman Geoff Abercrombie!

Had that been indeed the unmentioned surname of the man who had reared
her as his own? Why, then, had he, who had given her all else, not given
her, too, the name to bear?

The document set forth in brief that Frank Hillery, being of sound mind
and sole guardian of his daughter, Louise Frances, did give her to
Geoffrey Abercrombie, known as "Gentleman Geoff," for absolute adoption;
the said Gentleman Geoff promising to bring her up in all ways as his own
child and to leave her w