you share your
troubles with, if not with us? We must help each other!"

"Yes, I suppose so," returned Mr. DeVere, in a low voice. "And yet,
after all, I suppose this is not such a terrible trouble. It will not
kill any of us. But it will make a hard pull for me if I cannot prove my
contention."

"What is that?" asked Alice. "Is there some trouble with the film
company? You haven't lost your engagement; have you, Daddy?"

"Oh, no, it isn't that," he answered. "I'll tell you. Just a little more
of that spray, please, Alice. I will then be better able to talk."

In a few moments he resumed:

"Did you ever hear me speak of a Dan Merley?"

"You mean that man who came to see you when we lived in the other
apartment--the nicer one?" asked Ruth, for the Fenmore was not one of
the high-class residences of New York. The DeVeres had not been able to
afford a better home in the time of their poverty. And when better days
came they had still remained, as they liked their neighbors, the
Dalwoods. Then, too, they had been away all summer at Oak Farm.

"Yes, that was the man," replied Mr. DeVere. "Well, in my hard luck days
I borrowed five hundred dollars from him to meet some pressing needs. I
gave him my note for it. By hard work, later, I was able to scrape the
five hundred dollars together, and I paid him back.

"Unfortunately Dan Merley was a bit under the influence of drink when I
gave him the cash, and he could not find my promissory note to return to
me.

"He promised to send it around to me the next day, and, very foolishly,
as I see it now, I let him keep the money, not even getting a receipt
for it. I am not a business man--never was one. I trusted Dan Merley,
and I should not have done so."

"Why?" asked Ruth.

"Because he came to me to-day, for the first time in several months, and
demanded his five hundred dollars. I told him I had paid it, and tried
to recall to him the circumstances. But, as I said, he was slightly
intoxicated when I gave him the bills, and his mind was not clear. He
declares positively that I never paid him, and he says he will make
trouble for me if I do not hand him over the money in a short time."

"But you did give it to him, Daddy!" exclaimed Alice.

"Of course I did; but I have no proof."

"Did you pay him by check?" asked Ruth, who was quite a business woman,
and keeper of the house.

"Unfortunately I was not prosperous enough in those days to have a bank
account," answered M