There was the glint of a gold piece at the bottom of the bag. Dud flushed and reached out his hand for it. "That five dollars, Miss Helen. Thank you. I shall never spend this coin," declared Dud, earnestly. "And I shall take it to a jeweler's and have it properly engraved." "What will you have put on it?" asked Helen, laughing. He looked at her from under level brows, smiling yet quite serious. "I shall have engraved on it 'Snuggy, to Dud'--if I may?" he said. But Helen shook her head and although she still smiled, she said: "You'd better wait a bit, Mr. Lawyer, and see if your advice brings about any happy conclusion of my trouble. But you can keep the gold piece, just the same, to remember me by." "As though I needed _that_ reminder!" he cried. Jess removed the corner of the napkin from between her pretty teeth. "Get busy, do!" she cried. "I'm dying to hear about this strange affair you say you have come East to straighten out, Helen." So the girl from Sunset Ranch told all her story. Everything her father had said to her upon the topic before his death, and all she suspected about Fenwick Grimes and Allen Chesterton--even to the attitude Uncle Starkweather took in the matter--she placed before Dud Stone. He gave it grave attention. Helen was not afraid to talk plainly to him, and she held nothing back. But at the best, her story was somewhat disconnected and incomplete. She possessed very few details of the crime which had been committed. Mr. Morrell himself had been very hazy in his statements regarding the affair. "What we want first," declared Dud, impressively, "is to get the _facts_. Of course, at the time, the trouble must have made some stir. It got into the newspapers." "Oh, dear, yes," said Helen. "And that is what Uncle Starkweather is afraid of. He fears it will get into the papers again if I make any stir about it, and then there will be a scandal." "With his name connected with it?" "Yes." "He's dreadfully timid for his own good name; isn't he?" remarked Dud, sarcastically. "Well, first of all, I'll get the date of the occurrence and then search the files of all the city papers. The reporters usually get such matters pretty straight. To misstate such business troubles is skating on the thin ice of libel, and newspapers are careful. "Well, when we have all the facts before us--what people surmised, even, and how it looked to 'the man on the street,' as the saying is--then we'll know better how to go ahead. "Are you willing to leave the matter to me, Helen?" "What did I give you a retainer for?" demanded the girl from Sunset Ranch, smiling. "True," he replied, his own eyes dancing; "but there is a saying among lawyers that the feminine client does not really come to a lawyer for advice; rather, she pays him to listen to her talk." "Isn't that horrid of him?" cried Jess, unable to keep still any longer. "As though we girls talked any more than the men do. I should say not!"