e business."

"If that's the case, I think she'll see you," replied the nurse,
ushering him in and giving him a seat.

She excused herself and went into the bedroom, and in a few minutes Mrs.
Bragley appeared, a little curious and considerably flustered by the
announcement of a visitor from such a distance.

"My name is Thompson," the visitor said, as he rose and bowed. "I came
from Florida to see you on a business matter. I'm sorry to learn that
you are not well, and I'd put the matter off, only that I have
arrangements made to get back home as soon as possible."

"From Florida?" repeated the old woman. "It can't be that you've come to
see me about that orange grove property there that my husband put all
our money into before he died?"

"If you refer to the property at Sunny Slopes," returned the visitor,
"you are right. It is just that that I came to see you about."

"Laws me!" ejaculated the widow in some excitement. "And here it was
only a little while ago I was saying that I never expected to hear from
it. I wrote and wrote and never heard a word from it. I began to think,"
she went on a little apologetically, "that there might be some fraud or
something of that kind about it."

"Oh, nothing like that," the visitor said impressively. "Mr. Pacomb is
the soul of honor. I have never known him to do anything that wasn't
straight and aboveboard."

"I'm very glad to hear that," said the simple-hearted old woman. "He
wrote such beautiful letters to us when he was asking us to put our
money into the property that I thought he must be a nice man. I'm very
sorry that I ever had an unkind thought about him. I'm so glad to know
that things are all right. I need the money so badly. And my poor
husband always thought there would be a whole lot of money come from
it."

The stranger looked a little embarrassed.

"Quite right, quite right," he said. "There ought to have been a big
profit from it. Everybody thought so, and nobody felt more sure of it
than Mr. Pacomb himself. He thought so well of it that he put every
cent of his own money into it."

"Then he's made a fortune in it, too!" exclaimed the old woman, beaming
on her visitor.

The stranger coughed.

"No," he said, "that's the unfortunate thing about it. You see, Mrs.
Bragley, the thing didn't turn out as we had hoped and expected. The
land was right in the orange belt, and we had every reason to believe
that it would yield big results. But for some reason