rls of your own, only
to have somebody else's dumped on you?"

"Be calm, Judge," said Dunham, smiling. "I felt a little stage fright
when I thought it was the Evans case; but if it's only girls, I can
attend to them with one hand tied behind me."

Judge Trent regarded him wistfully. "John, do you know what you're
saying? Isn't yours the presumption of ignorance?"

"What? when I told you I had been in love a dozen times? To be sure, I
never met those who've hit me hardest; but cheer up, Judge, I'll stand
by you. What is it?"

"I'm not quite ready to say what it is. I'll fence with Fate by myself
awhile longer." As he spoke Calvin Trent took from his pocket a letter
and began to read it over once more.

"Very well," returned Dunham, picking up his papers. "I'm ready to act
as your second."

The following day Miss Martha Lacey locked the door of her cottage
behind her and set off for the business district of the town. Her hair
was carefully arranged and her bonnet was becoming. Her neighbors were
wont to say with admiration that Martha Lacey, though she did live
alone and was poor in kith, kin, and worldly fortune, never lost her
ambition. She kept an eye to the styles as carefully as the rosiest
belle in town.

"There isn't any sense in a woman letting herself look queer," Miss
Lacey often declared. "I don't mean to look queer."

"It's real sensible of Martha to do as she does," said one neighbor to
the new minister's wife. "She jilted the smartest man in town when she
was young and she's kept on looking the part, as you might say, ever
since. If she'd let herself run down, kind of seedy, everybody'd have
said she was disappointed; but he hasn't ever married--it's Judge
Trent, you know--and the way Martha holds her head up and wears gold
eyeglasses sort of makes folks think he'd be glad to get her any time.
It's real smart of Martha. The judge looks the seedy one. He never did
carry much flesh, but now he's dried up till he ain't much bigger'n a
grasshopper; but smart--Martha's smartness ain't to speak of beside
his. They do say he's as well known in Boston as he is here."

There was an extra determination in Miss Lacey's walk as she moved
along this morning, the watery spring sunshine beaming on the
well-brushed gray tailor gown she had bought ready-made at a sale a
year ago. She was on her way to the law offices of Calvin Trent, a rare
errand indeed and one which, if observed by acquaintances, she knew
would