da, but not
before he received another bright smile from the little girl. He waited
outside until he saw Augustus show the newcomers upstairs; then he
re-entered the office and went to the register which was the speculative
focus of interest for all the others. Octavius read:

June 18, 1889--FR. JOHN FRANCIS HONORE, NEW YORK. AILEEN ARMAGH,
ORPHAN ASYLUM, NEW YORK CITY.

The Colonel was in a state of effervescing hilarity. He rubbed his hands
energetically, slapped Octavius on the back, and exclaimed in high
feather:

"How's this for the first drops of the deluge, eh, Tave?"

Octavius made no reply. He waited, as usual, for the evening's mail. The
carrier handed him a telegram from New York for Mrs. Champney. It had
just come up on the train from Hallsport. He wondered what connection
its coming might have with the unexpected arrival of this orphan child?

II

On his way home Octavius Buzzby found himself wondering, as he had
wondered many times before on occasion, how he could checkmate this
latest and most unexpected move on the part of the mistress of
Champ-au-Haut. His mind was perturbed and he realized, while making an
effort to concentrate his attention on ways and means, that he had been
giving much of his mental strength during the last twenty years to the
search for ulterior motives on the part of Mrs. Louis Champney, a woman
of sixty now, a Googe by birth (the Googes, through some genealogical
necromancy, traced their descent from Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The name
alone, not the blood, had, according to family tradition, suffered
corruption with time), and the widow of Louis Champney, the late Judge
Champney's only son.

The Champneys had a double strain of French blood in their veins, Breton
and Flemish; the latter furnished the collateral branch of the Van
Ostends. This intermixture, flowing in the veins of men and women who
were Americans by the birthright of more than two centuries' enjoyment
of our country's institutions, had produced for several generations as
fine a strain of brains and breeding as America can show.

Louis Champney, the last of the line in direct descent, was looked upon
from his boyhood up as the culmination of these centuries' flowering.
When, at forty, he died without having fulfilled in any wise the great
expectations of his townspeople and relations, the interest of the
community, as well as of the family, centred in the prospects of Louis
Champney Googe, his na