now, and he didn't six years ago," Leslie resumed pacifically, "but it was hard to convince people of that. You should have seen the place the next day! Farmers, street boys, tramps, all sorts of rough people kept coming here with cats and dogs of all kinds,--oh, the forlorn creatures! And when papa refused to buy them, the people were angry and threatened to have him arrested for not carrying out his agreement. And all the ministers and the women's societies called on him to remonstrate with him for such wickedness, and when he said that he had not had anything to do with the advertisement, they showed plainly that they thought he was trying to crawl out of it because he had been caught. Oh, it was awful."

"Did you make any attempt to find out how the advertisement came to the paper, Doctor?"

Dr. Underwood shrugged his shoulders.

"Yes, they showed me the order. It had come by mail, with stamps enclosed to pay for the insertion. The dunderheaded fools hadn't had sense enough to guess that when a physician wants 'material' he doesn't advertise for it in the morning paper."

"Under the circumstances, Roger," said Mrs. Underwood gravely, "your flippancy is not becoming."

"It certainly was a neat scheme, if the object was to embarrass you, Doctor. What else, Miss Underwood?"

"One day every grocer in town appeared at the door with a big load of household supplies,--enough to provision a regiment for a winter. They had all received the same order,--a very large order, including expensive and unusual things that they had had to send away for. And of course they were angry when we wouldn't take any of the things. They said that after that they would accept no orders unless we paid for them in advance, and that was sometimes embarrassing, also!"

"Were the orders received by mail, as in the other cases?"

"I believe they were."

"Did you get any of the original papers? And have you preserved them?"

"No, I didn't preserve them," said Dr. Underwood. "You see, the disturbance was only a sporadic one. It stopped, and I dismissed the matter from my mind. I didn't realize that Leslie had stored so many of the details in her memory. I think she attaches too much importance to them."

"I am not at all sure that she does," said Burton promptly. "They certainly constitute a 

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