strove—and then had to fall back on your second line,” said Clement, helping him out.

Clement’s mind was in a curious condition. He realized that all this was madder than anything had any right to be—and yet he was rather intrigued, rather interested. He could not have told why. The fact that the little man was a lawyer, and his own lawyer at that, may have been the reason. Or it may have been that suggestion of danger, of adventure, called to that instinct lying dormant in the young of Clement’s race. Whatever it was, mad though he felt the whole business to be, he sat and listened.

The lawyer said, “You are right. I could do nothing with her. I failed. I could not bring her to reason. She is so quixotic. So headstrong. She has the wrongest sense of what is right.... And then I have no proofs. Only fears, only suspicions. I couldn’t clinch the matter with her. I couldn’t bring home anything to her.” 

[Pg 7]

[Pg 7]

“And what were you trying to bring home to her?” demanded Clement, who really thought he was entitled to some explanation.

“Bring home to her? The truth about that scamp. I was trying to make her see that she should not go out to Canada to marry him.”

Clement gasped. Also he felt a little stab of pain. Heloise was certainly most extraordinarily attractive.

“Marry him? Marry whom? Haven’t you just been insisting that she should marry me?”

“Of course,” shouted the little man. “That’s it. That’s what I’m driving at.”

“But what are you driving at?” gasped Clement. “First you tell me to get her to marry me, then you tell me she is going to marry some one else.”

“Perfectly true,” said the little man. “She is making this journey to Canada to marry some one else, a man named Henry Gunning.”

Clement fell back, too, staggered for thought. “Are you a lawyer,” he demanded, “or are you an apostle of the Mormons?”

The little lawyer rushed over to Clement and caught him by the lapel of his coat. “No! no! no!” he cried. “Please do understand. It is this hurry that has made everything so complicated. She is going to Canada to marry Henry Gunning. But she must not marry him. She must be prevented. That’s what I want you to do. I want[Pg 8] you to make her marry you 

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