tt expectations were, Dan reflected, scarcely at a
premium to-day!

Mr. Akins returned the papers to the safety box, and when Mrs. Owen and
Harwood were alone, she closed the door carefully.

"Now, Daniel," she began, opening her hand-satchel, "I always hold that
this is a funny world, but that things come out right in the end. They
mostly do; but sometimes the Devil gets into things and it ain't so
easy. You believe in the Devil, Daniel?"

"Well, my folks are Presbyterians," said Dan. "My own religion is the
same as Ware's. I'm not sure he vouches for the Devil."

"It's my firm conviction that there is one, Daniel,--a red one with a
forked tail; you see his works scattered around too often to doubt it."

Dan nodded. Mrs. Owen had placed carefully under a weight a paper she
had taken from her reticule.

"Daniel,"--she looked around at the door again, and dropped her
voice,--"I believe you're a good man, and a clean one. And Fitch says
you're a smart young man. It's as much because you're a good man as
because you've got brains that I've called on you to attend to Sylvia's
business. Now I'm going to tell you something that I wouldn't tell
anybody else on earth; it's a sacred trust, and I want you to feel bound
by a more solemn oath than the one you took at the clerk's office not
to steal Sylvia's money."

She fixed her remarkably penetrating gaze upon him so intently that he
turned uneasily in his chair. "It's something somebody who appreciates
Sylvia, as I think you do, ought to know about her. Andrew Kelton told
me just before Sylvia started to college. The poor man had been carrying
it alone till it broke him down; he had never told another soul. I
reckon it was the hardest job he ever did to tell me; and I wouldn't be
telling you except somebody ought to know who's in a position to help
Sylvia--sort o' look out for her and protect her. I believe"--and she
put out her hand and touched his arm lightly--"I believe I can trust you
to do that."

"Yes, Mrs. Owen."

She waited until he had answered her, and even then she was silent, lost
in thought.

"Professor Kelton didn't know, Daniel," she began gravely, "who Sylvia's
father was." She minimized the significance of this by continuing
rapidly. "Andrew had quit the Navy soon after the war and came out here
to Madison College to teach, and his wife had died and he didn't know
what to do with his daughter. Edna Kelton was a little headstrong, I
reckon, and wante