TWO months had passed and the first snow was whitening the streets of Hamilton. It was falling thick on Carberry hill, up which Clarke Unwin was plodding early one evening on a visit to the Earle cottage.

His errand was one of importance. A crisis was approaching in his affairs and he was determined to settle, once and for all, whether poor Polly’s money was to be sacrificed to her father’s increasing demands, or whether she could safely be allowed to follow her own wishes and give five thousand dollars of it to the lover whose future fortunes seemed to depend upon his possession of this amount.

Ephraim Earle had told her with something like a curse that he should expect from her this very sum on the first of the month, but if this demand were satisfied then Clarke’s own hopes must go, for his friends in the Cleveland works were fast becoming impatient, and Mr. Wright had written only two days before that if the amount demanded from him was not forthcoming in a fortnight, they would be obliged to listen to the overtures of a certain capitalist who was only waiting for Clarke’s withdrawal to place his own nephew in the desired place.

Clarke Unwin had not visited the Earle cottage since Ephraim took up his abode in it. Polly had refused to go there, and he himself felt no call to intrude upon a man who was personally disagreeable to him, and whom he could not but regard as a tyrant to the sweet girl whose life had been all sunshine till this man came into it with his preposterous demands and insatiable desire for money.

On this day, however, he had received her permission to present her case to her father and see what could be done with him. Perhaps when that father came to know her need he would find that he did not want the money as much as he made out; at all events the attempt was worth trying, and thus it was that Clarke braved the storm on this October night to interview a man he hated.

As he approached the brow of the hill he heard a noise of mingled laughter and singing, and glancing from under his umbrella he perceived that the various windows of the cottage were brilliantly lighted. The sight gave him a shock. “He is having one of his chess and checker orgies,” he commented to himself, and demurred at intruding himself at a time so unfavorable. But the remembrance of his mother and Polly, sitting together in anxious expectation of the good effects of his visit, determined him to proceed; and triumphing over his own disgust, he worked his way as rapidly as possible, and soon stood knee-deep in the snow that was piled up before the cottage door. The wind was blowing from the north and it struck him squarely as he raised his hand to the knocker, but though it bit into his skin, he paused a moment to listen to the final strains of old Cheeseborough’s voice, as he sang with rare sweetness a quaint old English ballad.

When it was over Clarke knocked. A sudden pushing back of chairs over a bare floor announced that his summons had been heard, and presently he had the satisfaction of seeing the door open and the figure of Mr. Earle standing before him. Clarke did not wait to be addressed.

“I am Clarke Unwin,” he announced. “May I be allowed the pleasure of a few minutes’ conversation with you?”

“A few minutes,” emphasized the other, drawing back with almost too free an air of hospitable welcome. “I hope you will not limit yourself to a few minutes, my boy; we have too good company here for that.” And without waiting for any demur on the part of his more than unwilling guest, he flung open a door at the right, and ushered him, greatly against his will, into the large parlor where Clarke had last stood with Polly at his side.

Just now it was filled with the choicest of the convivial spirits in town, most of whom had been playing checkers or chess and smoking till not a face present was fully visible. Yet Clarke, in the one quick glance he threw about him, recognized most if not all of the persons present—Horton by his oaths, which rang out with more or less good-natured emphasis with every play he made, and the three cronies in the corner by various characteristics well known in Hamilton, where these men passed for “the three disgraces.”

One person only was a perfect stranger to Clarke, but him he scarcely noticed, so intent was he on his errand and the desire he had of speaking to Mr. Earle alone.

“Hurrah! Come! Here’s Clarke Unwin!” shouted a voice from the depths of the smoky pall. “Brought your flute with you? Nobody comes here without some means of entertaining the company.”

“Off with your coat; there’s snow sticking to it! Uh! You’ve robbed the room of all the heat there was in it,” grumbled old Cheeseborough, whose fretfulness nobody minded because of the good nature that underlay it.

“Freedom Hall, this!” whispered Earle, still with that over-officious air Clarke had noticed in him at the doorway. “Sit with your coat on, or sit with it off; anything to suit yourself; only one thing we insist on—you must take a good glass-full of this piping hot cider before you speak a word. So much for good fellowship. Afterward you shall do as you please.”

“I have not come for enjoyment, but business,” put in Clarke, waving the glass aside and looking with some intentness into the face of the man upon whose present disposition depended so much of his own happiness and that of the young girl he had taken to his heart.

Earle, who had a secret pride in his own personal appearance which, now that he was in good physical condition, was not without a certain broad handsomeness, strutted back a pace and surveyed Clarke with interest.

“You are looking,” said he, “to see how I compare with that picture over your head. Well, as I take it, that picture, though painted sixteen years ago, does not do me justice. What do you think?”

Clarke, somewhat taken aback, as much by the smile which accompanied these words, as by the words themselves, hesitated for a moment and then boldly said:

“What you have gained in worldly knowledge and intercourse with men you have lost in that set purpose which gives character to the physiognomy and fills all its traits with individuality. In that face on the wall I see the inventor, but in yours, as it now confronts me, the——”

“Well, what?”

“The centre of this very delightful group,” finished Clarke, suavely.

It was said with a bow which included the whole assembly. Earle laughed and one or two about him frowned, but Clarke, heeding nobody, asked if he could not have a moment’s conversation with his host in the hall.

Earle, with a side glance directed, as Clarke thought, toward the one slight man in the corner whose face was unfamiliar to him, shook his head at this suggestion and blurted out: “That’s against the rules. When the Hail-Fellow-Well-Met Society comes together it is as one body. What is whispered in one corner is supposed to be heard in the next. Out with your business then, here. I have no secrets and can scarcely suppose you to have.”

If this was meant to frighten Clarke off it did not succeed. He determined to speak, and speak as he was commanded right there and then.

“Well,” said he, “since you force me to take the town into our confidence, I will. Your daughter——”

“Ah,” quoth Earle, genially, “she has remembered, then, that she has a father. She sends me her love, probably. Dear girl, how kind of her on this wintry night!”

“She sends you her respects,” Clarke corrected, frankly, “and wants to know if you insist upon having the last few dollars that she possesses.”

“Oh, what taste!” broke in the father, somewhat disconcerted. “I did think you would have better judgment than to discuss money matters in a social gathering like this. But since you have introduced the topic you may say to my dutiful little girl that since I have only asked for such sums as she is perfectly able to part with, I shall certainly expect her to recognize my claim upon her without hesitation or demur. Have you anything more to say, Mr. Unwin?”

Clarke, whose eye had wandered to the stranger in the corner, felt no desire to back out of the struggle, unpleasing as this publicity was. He therefore answered with a determined nod, and with a few whispered words which caused a slight decrease in the air of bravado with which his host regarded him.

“You persist,” that individual remarked, “notwithstanding the rules I have had the honor of quoting to you? I should not have expected it of you, Mr. Unwin; but since your time is short, as you say, and the subject must be discussed, what do you advise, gentlemen? Shall I listen to the plea of this outsider—outsider as regards this meeting, I mean, not as regards my feelings toward him as a father—and break our rules by taking him into another room, or shall I risk a blush or two for my charming little daughter’s perversity, and hear him out in your very good company and perhaps, under your equally good and worthy advice?”

“Hear him here!” piped up Cheeseborough, whose wits were somewhat befuddled by something stronger than cider.

“No, no, shame!” shouted Emmons. “Polly is a good girl and we have no business meddling with her affairs. Let them have their talk upstairs. I can find enough here to interest me.”

“Yes, yes, there’s the game! Let’s finish the game! Such interruptions are enough to spoil all nice calculations.”

“You were making for the king row.”

“Checkmate in three moves!”

“Here! fill up my glass first!”

“I declare if my pipe hasn’t gone out!”

Clarke, who heard these various exclamations without heeding them, glanced at Earle for his decision, but Earle’s eye was on the man in the farthest corner.

“Well, we’ll go upstairs!” he announced shortly wheeling about and leading the way into the hall. Clarke followed and was about to close the door behind him when a slim figure intervened between him and the door, and the stranger he had previously noticed glided into the hall.

“Who’s this?” he asked, noticing that this man showed every sign of accompanying them.

“A friend,” retorted Earle, “one of the devoted kind who sticks closer than a brother.”

Clarke, astonished, surveyed the thin young man who............