When they were all below, he made one final remark: "Your father owed me money, but I do not think of pressing my claim. You do not look as if you were in a position to satisfy it." "Ah," exclaimed Emma, thinking she had discovered the motive of his visit at last; "that is why you wanted to see the laboratory." "Partly," he acknowledged with a sly wink, "but not altogether. All there is there would not buy up the I. O. U. I hold. I shall have to let the matter go with other bad debts I suppose. But three hundred dollars is a goodly sum, young ladies, a goodly sum." Emma, who knew that her father had not been above borrowing money for his experiments, looked greatly distressed for a moment, but Hermione, who had now taken her usual place as leader, said without attempting to disguise the tone of suspicion in her voice: "Substantiate your claim and present your bill and we will try to pay it. We have still a few articles of furniture left." Huckins, who had never looked more hypocritically insinuating or more diabolically alert, exclaimed, "I can wait, I can wait." But Hermione, with a grand air and a candid look, answered bitterly and at once: "What we cannot do now we can never do. Our fortunes are not likely to increase in the future, so you had better put in your claim at once, if you really want your pay." "You think so?" he began; and his eye, which had been bright before, now gleamed with the excitement of a fear allayed. "I----" But just then the bell rang with a loud twang, and he desisted from finishing his sentence. Emma went to the door and soon came back with a letter which she handed to Hermione. "The man Jerry brought it," she explained, casting a meaning look at her sister. Hermione, with a quick flush, stepped to the window and in the shadow of the curtains read her note. It was a simple word of warning. DEAR MISS CAVANAGH: I met a man at your gate who threatened to go in. Do not receive him, or if you have already done so, distrust every word he has uttered and cut the interview short. He is Hiram Huckins, the man concerning whom I spoke so frankly when we were discussing the will of the Widow Wakeham. Yours most truly, FRANK ETHERIDGE. The flush with which Hermione read these lines was quite gone when she turned to survey the intruder, who had forced himself upon her confidence and that of her sister by means of a false name. Indeed she looked strangely pale and strangely indignant as she met his twinkling and restless eye, and, to any one who knew the contents of the note which she held, it would seem that her first words must be those of angry dismissal. But instead of these, she first looked at him with some curiosity, and then said in even, low, and slightly contemptuous tones: "Will you not remain and lunch with us, Mr. Huckins?"