“Ever since my husband died,” answered Polly Haddon, leaning back in her chair as though she were tired and smoothing her heavy hair back from her forehead. “He was an inventor,” she went on, encouraged by the girls’ friendly interest, to tell of her troubles. “For years he made hardly enough to keep us alive, and after the children came we had a harder pull of it than ever. Then suddenly,” she straightened up in her chair and into her black eyes came a strange gleam, “suddenly, my husband found the one little thing that was wrong with the invention he had been working on for so long—just some little thing it was, that a child could almost see, yet that he had overlooked—and we were fairly crazy with happiness. We thought we had at last realized our dream of a fortune.” She paused a moment, evidently living over that time in her mind, and the girls, fired by her excitement, waited impatiently for her to go on. “What happened then?” asked Vi. “Then,” said the woman, the light dying out of her eyes, leaving them tired and listless again, “the invention was stolen.” “Stolen!” they echoed, breathlessly. The woman nodded wearily. She had evidently lost all interest in her story. “My husband suspected a Philadelphia knitting company, whom he had told of his invention and who were very enthusiastic over it, of having some hand in the robbery. But when he accused them of it they denied it and offered a reward of twenty thousand dollars for the recovery of the models of the machinery.” “Twenty thousand dollars!” repeated Billie in an awed tone. “I guess they must have liked your husband’s invention pretty well to offer all that money for it.” The woman nodded, drearily, while two big tears rolled slowly down her face. “Yes, I think they would have accepted it and paid my husband almost anything he would have asked for it,” she answered. “But haven’t you ever found out who stole it?” asked Vi, eagerly. “I should think that the thief, whoever he is, would have brought the invention back because of the twenty thousand dollars.” The woman nodded again. “Yes, that was the queer thing about it,” she said. “When the knitting company first told us of the reward we were jubilant, my husband and I. We thought surely we would recover the precious invention then. But as the weeks went by and we heard nothing, the strain was too much. Poor Frank, after all those years of struggle, with victory snatched away at the last minute, when he had every right to think it in his grasp—my poor husband could fight no longer. He died.” With these words the poor woman bowed her head upon her hands and sobbed brokenly. The girls, feeling heartily sorry for her trouble but helpless to comfort her, rose awkwardly to their feet and picked up their skates from the floor where they had thrown them. Billie went over to the sobbing woman and patted her shyly on the shoulder. “I—I wish I could help you,” she ventured. “I—we are dreadfully sorry for you.”