place?"

"Yes, Cousin Lorando, though I hated to. But I wouldn't sell it, though they wanted me to. I just couldn't."

"I know."

He lighted his cigar and puffed at it in meditative silence for a moment, while the babble from the parlor floated in with the odor of the Ceylon tea and cigarettes.

"That's what I came about, Cousin Jule—the old place. You may think it's queer, for I never lived there but two years once, when father and your Uncle Joe farmed it on shares; but those two years just made it home to me. Of course Uncle Joe wasn't any real relation of mine, and you-all weren't my real cousins, but it was the only family I ever had, so to say, and I loved every one of you. Then we moved back into town; but you know I came in every week or so, and Aunt Martha used to have my room in the attic ready for me, just the same."

"Yes, I know; Aunt Martha never forgot you, Cousin Lorando."

"Well, it's fifteen years since I saw the old place, and a lot's happened since then, I tell you. First place, I'm a rich man, Cousin Jule.

"Oh, I don't mean one of these multi-millionaires you have about here, for I haven't even seven figures opposite my name; but short of that I did very well for myself out West there, and I earned it all fair, too—though I was pretty lucky, and that counts.

"Anyhow, never mind about that. Only I've got enough to have anything I want, and to give my friends something, too. So as soon as I got back. East I went straight down to the farm. But it was all shut up and a kind of green hedge where the fence used to be, and I judged it was sold, and I felt pretty sore about it, so I came right away."

"They only come there in June," Miss Trueman explained, "and they go back before Thanksgiving."

"Yes. Well, I didn't know that."

He waited again for a few seconds, and Miss Trueman sat in respectful silence till he should continue.

"You see, I'd been East once before, eight years ago, but I didn't see the farm then," he said finally.

"I got married while I was West."

His audience of one started slightly.

"She's dead now," he added abruptly.

"Oh, Cousin Lorando—"

"You needn't bother about the sympathy, my dear, for there's none needed. I hadn't been with her for a good while. I saw her in a concert-hall out there, and she had curly hair and a kind of taking way with her, and so I married her. I'd just made a big hit, and she wanted to come to New York, and we came. We went to a big hotel, and it was dress-suits for me and diamonds for her, and we drove in a carriage in the park in the afternoon. She liked it, but I soon got enough. I don't care much for that sort of thing. She wanted to go to the theatre and see the girls that she'd been one of, you see, from the other side of the curtain. And she saw a man there she used to know, and—well, it turned out she liked him better, that's all."

"Oh, Cousin Lorando, how terrible—for her!"

"Um, yes. She didn't think it was specially terrible, I guess, though. She just packed up and went."

"Went?"

"Yes—with him, you see. Diamonds and all. I got a divorce, of course. And she wasn't such a bad lot, after all, for he hadn't any money to speak of, compared to me. It was the man she wanted. Well, she got him."

"How awful!" Miss Trueman murmured.

"Oh, yes, I felt pretty sick for a while. But we hadn't been any too happy before she saw him, you see. It was a big mistake. She wasn't exactly the kind of woman you'd be apt to know, you see. So perhaps I got off easier than I deserved. But I never would have married while she was alive. Not but what I had a right to, you understand, but I guess I'm old-fashioned more ways than one. I read about her death a year or so ago. I don't believe she had any too good a time herself. She had an awful temper. But she certainly did have pretty hair," he concluded thoughtfully.

Miss Trueman gasped.

"So I didn't want to see New York again; I just hated the place. And