The Beaver herald. [volume] (Beaver, O.T. [Okla.]) 1895-1923, 1898-01-06
A CASE In EQUITY.
BY FRANCIS LYNDE.
Copyright. 1895. by J. B. lippineou Col
FRANCIS LYNDE
XIII.-CoNTINuED.

- 80, 49,
and because he honestly wanted to be
true to the new ideal, and he went
%oftener and stayed longer when he be-
gan TO feel the ground slipping from
under him in the small matter of senti-
ment. He said rather bitterly that he
must be true to something; that he
should lose what little self-respect his
tickle precipitancy had left him if he
suffered himself to swerve from the
plain path he had chosen in the day of
illness.
For some Of the doubts and much
of the dissatisfaction, Elsie was her
self answerable. She was frank with
out being confidential; she was affec-
tionate and sympathetic, but she never
gave him an opportunity to add a word
to those already spoken. She rejoiced
frankly in his stubborn perseverance
in the Kilgrow affair, and she was
openly thankful when the tide of i'll
health began to ebb; but beyond all
this, Philip felt hat there was a bar
rier which he had never been permit
ted TO pass. He told himself that it
was maidenly modesty-a nice refine
ment of womanly delicacy which de-
Tended her from the ambiguity of his
impulsivc declaration; and in this be-
lief he went about, seeking the OPP
%portunity for palmer speech which
chance or something else persistently
d. MED him. Sometimes it was Elsie's
mood; oftener it was the presence of a
third person - either Duncan or his
wife, or Protheroe. After such BATTLE
ments Philip scourged himself dutiful-
ly, heaping abuse on his own head for
not overriding such trivial obstacles.
He insisted that he owed it to himself
no less than to Elsie that there should
be a clear understanding between
them: driven into words, the thought
would have been hat he would be surer
of himself when there was no possibili-
ty of retreat.
Without doubt, and in the face of
much matter for t~hankfulness, Philip
was neither good enough o bad
enough to be wholly comfortable. Like
most compromises, the compromising
with ones conscience leaves the main
question still unsettled; and as to BEN
cfts, it was to the giver and not to the
receiver tIdU the DltSSliR was Dloii-
Used. 1t is true that Philip had found
an employment that called out the best
there was in him, and that in the bat
tic he had somehow stumbled into the
path that led away from sickness and
dependency; out at times he was tor
mented by the thought that he had
paid too dearly for ambition and bet
ter health. II was If he had sold him
self for an extension of life and the
w~herewithal to make it worth the nav
ing.
Two grains of comfort he had man
aged to sift out Of the summers chaff.
One was that Helen's sisterly letters
added no fuel to the fires Of conscience;
and the other was the news that the
bank in which the T~horndyke money
was invested was in difficulties. He
smiled at the thought that he was
able to extract comfort from this, but
so il was; the threat Of disaster madc
him throw himself with redoubled ar
dor into the case in equity. II rsight
easily happen that his attorneys fee
would be all that was left him when
the day of reckoning came, and under
the spur of this prcmonition he took
counsel Of zeal and taxed his
yet more persistently.
And in the matter of sourc Philip
had developed a creditable measure of
that ingenuity which is usually but not
always the handmaiden of experience.
He had attempted through various
channels to make overtures to Prag-.
more. He had tried to trace Gates and
his convenient witness. He had ran
sacked the old town, ferreting ont
everyone who could give him the slight
est information about Gates or Kilgrow,
the tenantry of the farm, the raid of the
J revenue officers, and such other scraps
of local history as might have a bearing
on the case. He had ridden for days on
the mountain in q hopeless attempt to
find witnesses who could certify that
Kilgrow had not beer in Allacoochee
on the 10th of May, 1885. And when all
these expedients had been pushed to n
fruitless conclusion, he had secured the
services of a New York detective, who,
after three weeks of painstaking inves-
iigation, threw up the case in disgust
and went back to the metropolis.
lie forests on JuDal mountain were
beginning to hoist the ensign of au-
tumn when the professional thief-taker
boarded the train for New York, and
Thorndyke was already sitting his
brain for fresh suggestions, when the
laconic wires, supplemented by the tar
der but more explicit mail, brought
news of the failure of Hallam's bank.
1t was an assignment, and-so wrote
Mrs. ~Thorndyke, hopefully-the pub
lished assets were much in excess of
the liabilities, but a letter from Col. Van
Colt went nearer the truth. When the
affairs of the bank should be settled,
said the solicitor, there would be mon
ey enough to satisfy the depositors and
other creditors, with possibly a small
dividend for the stockholders. AS 10
the latter. however, the colonel init
mated that Philip would do well to
leave it out Of his plans for the future;
in the meantime. and for present neces-
stiles there were a few hundred dollars
which he, the colonel, had taken the
libert~ 10 transfer from Hallam's to
his . 4 bank out of the last semi-an-
nual dividend, which sum was subject
10 Philips order.
The same mail brought a letter from
Helen. The securities which had been
set aside for her marriage portion were
Hffll eaf. a,I H. Iast., f,,.. III.