gain--that's better--and smoke if you
want to, and let me finish these papers."

They were for the greater part the odds and ends which accumulate in
every desk. There were receipted bills, old insurance policies, letters
that had once seemed worth prizing, catalogues of things that had never
been bought, prospectuses, newspaper clippings, copies of old contracts.
And yet they had an interest, too--an interest partly historical, partly
personal.

This merry letter, for instance, which Mary read and smiled over--who was
the "Jack" who had written it? "Dead, perhaps, like dad," thought Mary.
Yes, dead perhaps, and all his fun and drollery suddenly fallen into
silence and buried with him.

"Isn't life queer!" she thought. "Now why did he save this clipping?"

She read the clipping and enjoyed it. Wally, watching from his chair, saw
the smile which passed over her face.

"She'll warm up some day," he confidently told himself, with that
bluntness of thought which comes to us all at times. "See how she flared
up because I danced with Helen. Maybe if I made her jealous..."

At the desk Mary picked up another paper--an old cable. She read it,
re-read it, and quietly folded it again; but for all her calmness the
colour slowly mounted to her cheeks, as the recollection of odd words and
phrases arose to her mind.

"Wally," she said in her quietest voice, "I'm going to ask you a
question, but first you must promise to answer me truly."

"Cross my heart and hope to die!"

"Are you ready?"

"Quite ready."

"Then did you ever hear of any one in our family named Paul?"

"Y-yes--"

"Who was he?"

It was some time before he told the story, but trust a girl to make a man
speak when she wishes it! He softened the recital in every possible way,
but trust a girl again to read between the lines when she wants to!

"And didn't he ever come back?" she asked.

"No; you see he couldn't very well. There was an accident out
West--somebody killed--anyhow, he was blamed for it. Queer, isn't it?" he
broke off, trying to relieve the subject. "The Kaiser can start a war and
kill millions. That's glory. But if some poor devil loses his head--"

Mary wasn't through yet.

"You say he's dead!" she asked.

"Oh, yes, years ago. He must have been dead--oh, let me see--about
fifteen or twenty years, I guess."

"Poor dad!" thought Mary that night. "What he must have gone through!
I'll bet he didn't think that love was the only thing in