he paper up to lay it on the desk. Then she glanced at it,
and saw that it was a long column of dates and figures, recording
successive sums, never large ones, paid regularly to "Wm. M." The dates
covered a year, and the sum amounted at least to several hundreds.

Mrs. Lapham laid the paper down on the desk, and then she took it up
again and put it into her work-basket, meaning to give it to him. When
he came in she saw him looking absent-mindedly about for something, and
then going to work upon his papers, apparently without it. She thought
she would wait till he missed it definitely, and then give him the
scrap she had picked up. It lay in her basket, and after some days it
found its way under the work in it, and she forgot it.

XXIII.

SINCE New Year's there had scarcely been a mild day, and the streets
were full of snow, growing foul under the city feet and hoofs, and
renewing its purity from the skies with repeated falls, which in turn
lost their whiteness, beaten down, and beaten black and hard into a
solid bed like iron. The sleighing was incomparable, and the air was
full of the din of bells; but Lapham's turnout was not of those that
thronged the Brighton road every afternoon; the man at the
livery-stable sent him word that the mare's legs were swelling.

He and Corey had little to do with each other. He did not know how
Penelope had arranged it with Corey; his wife said she knew no more
than he did, and he did not like to ask the girl herself, especially as
Corey no longer came to the house. He saw that she was cheerfuller
than she had been, and helpfuller with him and her mother. Now and
then Lapham opened his troubled soul to her a little, letting his
thought break into speech without preamble or conclusion. Once he
said--

"Pen, I presume you know I'm in trouble."

"We all seem to be there," said the girl.

"Yes, but there's a difference between being there by your own fault
and being there by somebody else's."

"I don't call it his fault," she said.

"I call it mine," said the Colonel.

The girl laughed. Her thought was of her own care, and her father's
wholly of his. She must come to his ground. "What have you been doing
wrong?"

"I don't know as you'd call it wrong. It's what people do all the
time. But I wish I'd let stocks alone. It's what I always promised
your mother I would do. But there's no use cryin' over spilt milk; or
watered stock, either."

"I don't think