For many years Octavius Buzzby had championed openly and in secret the cause of Aurora Googe and her only son. To-night, while walking slowly homewards, he was pondering what attitude of mind he must assume, before he could deal adequately with the momentous event which had been foreshadowed from the moment he learned from the priest's lips that Mr. Van Ostend was implicated in the coming of this orphan child. He recalled that little Alice Van Ostend prattled much about this same child during the week she had spent recently with her father at Champ-au-Haut. Was the mistress of Champ-au-Haut going to adopt her? Almeda Champney had never wanted the blessing of a child, and, contrary to her young husband's wishes--he was her junior by twelve years--she had had her way. Her nature was so absorbingly tenacious of whatever held her narrow interests, that a child at Champ-au-Haut would have broken, in a measure, her domination of her weaker-willed husband, because it would have centred in itself his love and ambition to "keep up the name." That now, eleven years after Louis Champney's death, she should contemplate the introduction into her perfectly ordered household of a child, an alien, was a revelation of appalling moment to Octavius. He scouted the idea that she would enter the house as an assistant. None was needed; and, moreover, those small hands could accomplish little in the next ten years. She meant to adopt her then! An alien was to inherit the Champney property! Octavius actually shivered at the thought. Was it, could it be an act of spite against Aurora Googe? Was it a final answer to any expectations of her nephew, Champney Googe, her husband's namesake and favorite? Was this little alien waif to be made a catspaw for her revenge? She was capable of such a thing, was Almeda Champney. _He_ knew her; none better! Had not her will, thus far in her life, bent everything with which it had come in contact; crushed whatever had opposed it; broken irrevocably whosoever for a while had successfully resisted it? His thin lips drew to a straight line. All his manhood's strength of desire for fair play, a desire he had been fated to see unfulfilled during the last twenty years, rose in rebellion to champion the cause of the little newcomer who smiled on him so brightly in the office of The Greenbush. Nor did he falter in his resolution when he presented himself at the library door with the telegram in his hand. "Come in, Octavius; was there any mail?" "Only a telegram from New York." He handed it to her. She opened and read it; then laid it on the table. She removed her eyeglasses, for she had grown far-sighted with advancing years, in order to look at the back of the small man who was leaving the room. If he had seen the smile that accompanied the action, he might well have faltered in his resolution to champion any righteous cause on earth. "Wait a moment, Octavius."