t an edge on you? What was the
matter with you to-day?"

Fenn shook his head slowly and said: "It's different with me. I just
couldn't help feeling that if I was worth any woman's giving
herself--was worth anything as a man, I'd want to be dead square with
that Yengst creature--and I got to thinking, maybe in his place, drunk
and hungry--well, I just couldn't, Tom--because--because of--well, I
wanted her to marry a human being first--not a county attorney!"

"You're a damn fool!" retorted Van Dorn. "Do you think you'll succeed in
this world on that basis! I tell you if I was in love with a woman I'd
want to take that Yengst case and lay it before her as a trophy I'd
won--lay it before her like a dog!"

Fenn hesitated. He disliked to give pain. But finally he said, "I
suppose, Tom, I'd like to lay it before her--like a man!"

"Hell's delight!" sneered Van Dorn, and they turned off the subject of
the tender passion, and went to considering certain stipulations that
Van Dorn was asking of the county attorney in another matter before the
court.

The next day young Thomas Van Dorn began rather definitely to prepare
his pleading in still another suit in another court, and before the
summer's end, Morty Sands's mandolin was wrapped in its chamois skin bag
and locked in its mahogany case. Sometimes Morty, whistling softly and
dolefully, would pass the Nesbit home late at night, hoping that his
chirping might reach her heart; at times he made a rather formal call
upon the entire Nesbit family, which he was obviously encouraged to
repeat by the elders. But Morty was inclined to hide in the thicket of
his sorrow and twitter his heart out to the cold stars. Tom Van Dorn
pervaded the Nesbit home by day with his flowers and books and candy,
and by night--as many nights a week as he could buy, beg or steal--by
night he pervaded the Nesbit home like an obstinate haunt.

He fell upon the whole family and made violent love to the Doctor and
Mrs. Nesbit. He read Browning to the Doctor and did his errands in
politics like a retrieving dog. Mrs. Nesbit learned through him to her
great joy that the Satterthwaite, who was the maternal grandfather of
the Tory governor of Maryland, was not descended from the same Satterlee
hanged by King John in his war with the barons, but from the Sussex
branch of the family that remained loyal to the Crown. But Tom Van Dorn
wasted no time or strength in foolishness with the daughter of the
house. His