e knew what that handsome lad had been to the old
couple. He thought now how merciful it had been that old Christopher had
died before that cruel accident on the football field in which the lad
had been fatally injured. The brunt of the blow had fallen upon Madame.
And after the boy's death, a gloom had settled over her and the old
house which nothing had seemed able to dispel. As a last desperate
resort the lawyer had suggested, with a courage that cost considerable
effort, the finding of this other heir.

Mr. Allendyce had known very little of that "other branch" of the
family. Old Christopher had had a younger half-brother, Charles, who, at
the time Christopher took over the responsibilities of the head of the
family, went off to South America where he married a young Spanish girl.
And from the moment of that "low" marriage, as old Christopher had
called it, to the investigation by Mr. Allendyce's agents, nothing had
been heard at Gray Manor of this Charles Forsyth.

It had cost considerable money to trace him down but, accomplished, Mr.
Allendyce had with satisfaction tabulated the results in his neat little
note-book. Charles had died leaving one son, James. James had one child,
Gordon. They lived at 22 Patchin Place, New York City.

The thought of the fairy story flashed back into the lawyer's mind. He
knew his New York and he knew Patchin Place, where poverty and ambition
elbowed one another, and squalor stabbed at the heart of beauty. This
Gordon Forsyth had his childhood amid this, lived on the rise and fall
of an artist's day-by-day fortune. Now he would be taken from all that,
brought to Gray Manor, put under special tutorage, so that, some day he
could step into that other lad's place. If that didn't equal an Arabian
Night's tale!

"I'll go down to Patchin Place myself. I'd like to see their faces when
I tell them!" he declared aloud, with a tingle within his heart that was
a thrill although the little man did not know it.

Harkness coughed behind him. He turned quickly. Harkness bowed stiffly.
"Madame awaits you in the drawing-room."

The little man-of-the-law's chin went out. "Madame awaits--" Poor old
Madame; she would not have known how to come in and say "Let us go out
to dinner." There had to be all the ceremony and fuss--or it would not
have been Gray Manor and Madame Christopher Forsyth.

"All right. I'll find her," Mr. Allendyce growled. Then he was startled
out of his usual composure by catc