Sweetwater Returns

“You see me again, Miss Scott. I hope that yesterday’s intrusion has not prejudiced you against me.

“I have no prejudices,” was her simple but firm reply. “I am only hurried and very anxious. The doctor is with Mr. Brotherson just now; but he has several other equally sick patients to visit and I dare not keep him here too long.”

“Then you will welcome my abruptness. Miss Scott, here is a letter from Mr. Challoner. It will explain my position. As you will see, his only desire is to establish the fact that his daughter did not commit suicide. She was all he had in the world, and the thought that she could, for any reason, take her own life is unbearable to him. Indeed, he will not believe she did so, evidence or no evidence. May I ask if you agree with him? You have seen Miss Challoner, I believe. Do you think she was the woman to plunge a dagger in her heart in a place as public as a hotel reception room?

“No, Mr. Sweetwater. I’m a poor working girl, with very little education and almost no knowledge of the world and such ladies as she. But something tells me for all that, that she was too nice to do this. I saw her once and it made me want to be quiet and kind and beautiful like her. I never shall think she did anything so horrible. Nor will Mr. Brotherson ever believe it. He could not and live. You see, I am talking to you as if you knew him,— the kind of man he is and just how he feels towards Miss Challoner. He is —” Her voice trailed off and a look, uncommon and almost elevated, illumined her face. “I will not tell you what he is; you will know, if you ever see him.”

“If the favourable opinion of a whole town makes a good fellow, he ought to be of the best,” returned Sweetwater, with his most honest smile. “I hear but one story of him wherever I turn.”

“There is but one story to tell,” she smiled, and her head drooped softly, but with no air of self-consciousness.

Sweetwater watched her for a moment, and then remarked: “I’m going to take one thing for granted; that you are as anxious as we are to clear Miss Challoner’s memory.”

“O yes, O yes.”

“More than that, that you are ready and eager to help us. Your very looks show that.”

“You are right; I would do anything to help you. But what can a girl like me do? Nothing; nothing. I know too little. Mr. Challoner must see that when you tell him I’m only the daughter of a foreman.”

“And a friend of Mr. Brotherson,” supplemented Sweetwater.

“Yes,” she smiled, “he would want me to say so. But that’s his goodness. I don’t deserve the honour.”

“His friend and therefore his confidante,” Sweetwater continued. “He has talked to you about Miss Challoner?”

“He had to. There was nobody else to whom he could talk; and then, I had seen her and could understand.”

“Where did you see her?”

“In New York. I was there once with father, who took me to see her. I think she had asked Mr. Brotherson to send his little friend to her hotel if ever we came to New York.”

“That was some time ago?”

“We were there in June.”

“And you have corresponded ever since with Miss Challoner?”

“She has been good enough to write, and I have ventured at times to answer her.”

The suspicion which might have come to some men found no harbour in Sweetwater’s mind. This young girl was beautiful, there was no denying that, beautiful in a somewhat startling and quite unusual way; but there was nothing in her bearing, nothing in Miss Challoner’s letters to indicate that she had been a cause for jealousy in the New York lady’s mind. He, therefore, ignored this possibility, pursuing his inquiry along the direct lines he had already laid out for himself. Smiling a little, but in a very earnest fashion, he pointed to the letter she still held and quietly said:

“Remember that I’m not speaking for myself, Miss Scott, when I seem a little too persistent and inquiring. You hav............