the middle of his year with Sir George, dazed and bewildered by her
faithlessness and his grandfather's perfidy.

Out of a clear sky had come the thunderbolt. And then, while he was still
dazed and furious, his grandfather had tried to convince him that he had
done him a deuce of a good turn in showing up Anne Tresslyn!

In patience the old man had listened to his grandson's tirade, his
ravings, his anathemas. He had heard himself called a traitor. He had
smiled grimly on being described as a satyr! When words and breath at last
failed the stalwart Braden, the old gentleman, looking keenly out from
beneath his shaggy brows, and without the slightest trace of resentment in
his manner, suggested that they leave the matter to Anne.

"If she really wants you, my boy, she'll chuck me and my two-million-
dollar purse out of the window, so to speak, and she'll marry you in spite
of your poverty. If she does that, I'll be satisfied. I'll step down and
out and I'll praise God for his latest miracle. If she looks at it from
the other point of view,—the perfectly safe and secure way, you
understand,—and confirms her allegiance to me, I'll still be exceedingly
happy in the consciousness that I've done you a good turn. I will enter my
extreme old age in the race against your healthy youth. I will proffer my
three or four remaining years to her as against the fifty you may be able
to give her. Go and see her at once. Then come back here to me and tell me
what she says."

And so it was that Braden Thorpe returned, as he had agreed to do, to the
home of the man who had robbed him of his greatest possession,—faith in
woman. He found his grandfather seated in the library, in front of a half-
dead fire. A word, in passing, to describe this remarkable old man. He was