self and fairly snatched the letters from his
hands. Hum! She couldn't pull the wool over my eyes. I knew she
hoped somehow, some way, there would be a big fat one with Paget, Legal
Adviser, or whatever a Chicago lawyer puts on his envelopes. Jerry's
just say: "Attorney at Law."

No letter ever came that had Paget in the corner, or anything happened
that did Shelley any good. Far otherwise! Just before supper Leon
came from Groveville one evening, and all of us could see at a glance
that he had been crying like a baby. He had wiped up, and was trying
to hold in, but he was killed, next. I nearly said, "Well, for
heaven's sake, another!" when I saw him. He slammed down a big, long
envelope, having printing on it, before father, and glared at it as if
he wanted to tear it to smithereens, and he said: "If you want to know
why it looks like that, I buried it under a stone once; but I had to go
back, and then I threw it as far as I could send it, into Ditton's
gully, but after a while I hunted it up again!"

Then he keeled over on the couch mother keeps for her in the
dining-room, and sobbed until he looked like he'd come apart.

Of course all of us knew exactly what that letter was from the way he
acted. Mother had told him, time and again, not to set his heart so;
father had, too and Laddie, and every one of us, but that little
half-Arab, half-Kentucky mare was the worst temptation a man who loved
horses could possibly have; and while father and mother stopped at good
work horses, and matched roadsters for the carriage, they managed to
prize and tend them so that every one of us had been born horse-crazy,
and we had been allowed to ride, care for, and taught to love horses
all our lives. Treat a horse ugly, and we'd have gone on the thrashing
floor ourselves.

Father laid the letter face down, his hand on it, and shook his head.
"This is too bad!" he said. "It's a burning shame, but the money, the
exact amount, was taken from a farmer in Medina County, Ohio, by a
traveller he sheltered a few days, because he complained of a bad foot.
The description of the man who robbed us is perfect. The money was
from the sale of some prize cattle. It will have to be returned."

"Just let me see the letter a minute," said Laddie.

He read it over thoughtfully. He was long enough about it to have gone
over it three times; then he looked at Leon, and his forehead creased
in a deep frown. The tears slid down mother'