A slight cold, aided and abetted by a dear exaggerating idiot of a tyrannical doctor, confined me to the house and she came flying in, expecting to find me in extremis.

When she saw me clothed and in my right mind and smoking a big cigar, she called me a fraud.
"Look here," said I, after a while.

"About Gedge--" again her brow darkened and her lips set stiffly--"do you think he has his knife into young Randall Holmes ?" I had worried about the boy.

Naturally, if Gedge found the relations between his daughter and Randall unsatisfactory, no one could blame him for any outbreak of parental indignation.

But he ought to break out openly, while there was yet time--before any harm was done--not nurse some diabolical scheme of subterraneous vengeance.