"No, I am not going to Maria's," Mrs. Pennybacker had told Bess. "Margaret needs us. And besides, Maria always rubs my fur the wrong way, and just now I want it to lie straight." Several days elapsed after their return before Margaret saw anything of Richard De Jarnette. When she did he came to make a formal demand for the child. She refused absolutely to give him up. In thinking of that interview when he was gone she felt depressingly aware that she had done her cause no good, for she had said many bitter intemperate things, being under great provocation. To them all he listened without reply until she had spent herself. Then he said, "My dead brother's will gave me this child. I accept it as a sacred trust. The courts have sustained that will and my claim. I shall have the child. I beg that you will not deceive yourself, nor let any one else deceive you into thinking that my determination is subject to change." "You will never get him," she said, "unless you tear him by force from my arms!" He bowed gravely then and left her. The next day an officer appeared at the Massachusetts Avenue house with a paper to serve upon Mrs. De Jarnette. Habeas corpus proceedings had been instituted in the District Supreme Court by Richard De Jarnette to recover the custody of his ward, Philip Varnum De Jarnette. Margaret Varnum De Jarnette, the mother of the child, was named as respondent in the suit. The paper was an order duly signed requiring the respondent to show cause October twelfth at 10 a. m. why writ of habeas corpus should not be issued. October twelfth was one week away. * * * * * The court-room was crowded to its utmost capacity when the De Jarnette case was called. A contest for the custody of a child rarely fails to excite interest, and in this case it was greatly enhanced by the social position and financial standing of the litigants. Besides this, the case had attracted much attention because of the legal points involved. The daily papers had done their best to prepare the public for this trial. The account of the finding of the child after years of search had been given in full (with one notable exception) from the Smeltzer point of view. The details of the sensational will case were revived and the kidnapping by the mother on the night following the decision which awarded her child to the guardian under the will. The accident by which Victor De Jarnette lost his life was recalled and related with much circumstantiality and some enlargement. It was all discussed in many a household in Washington during the week preceding the trial, and it brought to the court-room a good attendance that day. Women were there in unusual numbers, drawn thither by their sympathies as well as their curiosity. John Harcourt, looking back of him, thought he had never seen so many there before.