y, above the victim's heart, and then, suddenly,
bore his weight upon the blade.

Abigail Prim always had been a thorn in the flesh of her stepmother--a
well-meaning, unimaginative, ambitious, and rather common woman. Coming
into the Prim home as house-keeper shortly after the death of Abigail's
mother, the second Mrs. Prim had from the first looked upon Abigail
principally as an obstacle to be overcome. She had tried to 'do right by
her'; but she had never given the child what a child most needs and most
craves--love and understanding. Not loving Abigail, the house-keeper
could, naturally, not give her love; and as for understanding her one
might as reasonably have expected an adding machine to understand higher
mathematics.

Jonas Prim loved his daughter. There was nothing, within reason, that
money could buy which he would not have given her for the asking; but
Jonas Prim's love, as his life, was expressed in dollar signs, while the
love which Abigail craved is better expressed by any other means at the
command of man.

Being misunderstood and, to all outward appearances of sentiment and
affection, unloved had not in any way embittered Abigail's remarkably
joyous temperament made up for it in some measure by getting all the
fun and excitement out of life which she could discover therein, or
invent through the medium of her own resourceful imagination.

But recently the first real sorrow had been thrust into her young life
since the half-forgotten mother had been taken from her. The second
Mrs. Prim had decided that it was her 'duty' to see that Abigail, having
finished school and college, was properly married. As a matchmaker
the second Mrs. Prim was as a Texas steer in a ten cent store. It was
nothing to her that Abigail did not wish to marry anyone, or that the
man of Mrs. Prim's choice, had he been the sole surviving male in the
Universe, would have still been as far from Abigail's choice as though
he had been an inhabitant of one of Orion's most distant planets.

As a matter of fact Abigail Prim detested Samuel Benham because he
represented to her everything in life which she shrank from--age,
avoirdupois, infirmity, baldness, stupidity, and matrimony. He was a
prosaic old bachelor who had amassed a fortune by the simple means of
inheriting three farms upon which an industrial city subsequently had
been built. Necessity rather than foresight had compelled him to hold on
to his property; and six weeks of typh