usband, and it will make a family scandal just when he
believed he had all difficulties settled, and how _is_ he to prove his
charge? Wilmarth is not a man to leave a weak point if he can help. His
plans have all been nicely laid. Floyd feels certain now that he did
enter the office, attracted perhaps by a gleam of light. What if he had
not wakened until the fire was under full headway! Locked in, confused,
his very life might have been the forfeit, and he shudders. He is not
tired of life at three-and-thirty, if some events are not shaped quite
to his liking.

He washes up and tidies himself a little, but his coat he finds rather
a wreck after the deadly struggle. He sends one of the men out for some
breakfast, and shortly after that is despatched, the Grandon carriage
drives up, its occupants more than astonished. The brief alarm in the
night has not reached them.

Floyd leads them into the office and the door is closed. He relates his
singular story with concise brevity, and the little group listen in
amazement.

"The man has been a villain all the way through," declares Eugene, with
virtuous severity. "He did actually convince me last summer that St.
Vincent's plan would prove a complete failure, and that the business
would be nothing, yet he made me what I considered generous offers for
so poor an establishment. But for Floyd," he admits, with great
magnanimity, "I should have played into his hands."

"I think," Floyd announces, after every one has expressed frank
indignation, "that for a day or two we had better keep silent. I will
have the damage repaired, and now, it seems, having him at your mercy,
you can compel him to a bargain," and he glances at Murray.

They agree upon this plan and go over the building. The machinery is
very slightly damaged; the stock, not being inflammable, has been
injured more by water, but they find rags and cotton-waste saturated
with kerosene. Once under good headway the building would surely have
gone.

"Mr. Grandon," and a lad comes rushing up-stairs, "there is some one to
see you in a great hurry, down here in a wagon."

It is Marcia's pony phaeton, and two ladies are in it, one a Mrs.
Locke, Marcia's neighbor.

"I have been down to Grandon Park," she begins, nervously. "I had some
dreadful tidings! What a terrible night! Your sister----"

"What has happened to Mrs. Wilmarth?" he cries, in alarm. Can her
husband have wreaked his vengeance upon her?

"Her husband was