"What? when I told you I had been in love a dozen times? To be sure, I never met those who've hit me hardest; but cheer up, Judge, I'll stand by you. What is it?" 

 "I'm not quite ready to say what it is. I'll fence with Fate by myself awhile longer." As he spoke Calvin Trent took from his pocket a letter and began to read it over once more. 

 "Very well," returned Dunham, picking up his papers. "I'm ready to act as your second." 

 The following day Miss Martha Lacey locked the door of her cottage behind her and set off for the business district of the town. Her hair was carefully arranged and her bonnet was becoming. Her neighbors were wont to say with admiration that Martha Lacey, though she did live alone and was poor in kith, kin, and worldly fortune, never lost her ambition. She kept an eye to the styles as carefully as the rosiest belle in town. 

 "There isn't any sense in a woman letting herself look queer," Miss Lacey often declared. "I don't mean to look queer." 

 "It's real sensible of Martha to do as she does," said one neighbor to the new minister's wife. "She jilted the smartest man in town when she was young and she's kept on looking the part, as you might say, ever since. If she'd let herself run down, kind of seedy, everybody'd have said she was disappointed; but he hasn't ever married—it's Judge Trent, you know—and the way Martha holds her head up and wears gold eyeglasses sort of makes folks think he'd be glad to get her any time. It's real smart of Martha. The judge looks the seedy one. He never did carry much flesh, but now he's dried up till he ain't much bigger'n a grasshopper; but smart—Martha's smartness ain't to speak of beside his. They do say he's as well known in Boston as he is here." 

 There was an extra determination in Miss Lacey's walk as she moved along this morning, the watery spring sunshine beaming on the well-brushed gray tailor gown she had bought ready-made at a sale a year ago. She was on her way to the law offices of Calvin Trent, a rare errand indeed and one which, if observed by acquaintances, she knew would even now "make talk;" but she did not falter, nor look to the right or left as she at last entered the dingy doorway and ascended the worn staircase. 

 Scarcely pausing before the black-lettered door, she walked into the anteroom, and apparently her entrance sent a communication to the inner office; for while she stood for a moment looking dubiously at the uninviting 

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