liams, across under Catoctin?"

I nodded. "I thought you two were going to make a match of it sometime,"
I said.

"Prettiest girl in the valley," he assented; "but her family is hardly
what we would call the best, you know." I looked at him very hard.

"Then why did you go there so often all last year?" I asked him. "Might
she not think--"

He flushed still more, his mouth twitching now. "Jack," he said, "it's
all through. I want to ask you. I ought to marry Jennie Williams, but--"

Now I looked at him full and hard, and guessed. Perhaps my face was
grave. I was beginning to wonder whether there was one clean thing in
all the world.

"Oh, she can marry," went on Harry. "No difficulty about that. She has
another beau who loves her to distraction, and who doesn't in the least
suspect--a decent sort of a fellow, a young farmer of her own class."

"And, in your belief, that wedding should go on?"

He shifted uneasily.

"When is this wedding to be?" I asked.

"Oh, naturally, very soon," he answered. "I am doing as handsome a thing
as I know how by her. Sometimes it's mighty hard to do the handsome
thing--even mighty hard to know what is the handsome thing itself."

"Yes," said I. But who was I that I should judge him?

"If you were just where I am," asked Harry Sheraton, slowly, "what would
you do? I'd like to do what is right, you know."

"Oh no, you don't, Harry," I broke out. "You want to do what is easiest.
If you wanted to do what is right, you'd never ask me nor any one else.
Don't ask me, because I don't know. Suppose you were in the case of that
other young man who loves her? Suppose he did not know--or suppose he
_did_ know. What would be right for him?"

"Heavy end of the log for him," admitted he, grimly. "That's true, sure
as you're born."

"When one does not love a girl, and sees no happiness in the thought of
living with her all his life, what squares that, Harry, in your
opinion?"

"I've just asked you," he rejoined. "Why do you ask me? You say one
ought to know what is right in his own case without any such asking, and
I say that isn't always true. Oh, damn it all, anyway. Why are we made
the way we are?"

"If only the girl in each case would be content by having the handsome
thing done by her!" said I, bitterly.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE UNCOVERING OF GORDON ORME

It is not necessary for me to state that dinner in the Sheraton hall,
with its dull mahogany and its shining silver an