Arizona republican., 1898-07-14

her affliction I doubt whether she had been able to decide whither to go in case she left the village. She had no near relations, certainly none to whom she would turn at such a time. In her years of wandering with her aunt she had made few intimate friends. In short, she was left without anyone from whom she might naturally seek conso- lation and counsel. The good women of the neighborhood did their best ) take the place of kinsfolk and old friends; they wept with her in the days when her bereavement had just come upon her. and afterward. when the first bitterness of her loss was past, they kept her company and strove to cheer her, after the homely fashion of their kind. And so it happened that she re- mained with us, bearing her sorrow as best she could.
 Not long after the death of her aunt I had confirmation of the story Mrs. Weston had brought me. The trustee of the estate, the income of which Mrs. Loring hal received, came to Rodney town to attend the funeral services. Ee was lawyer, cautious and reserved in manner, and supposedly as free from sentimen+ality as the desk in his office. Yet under the professional mask there was, after all, something of the emo- tional man, which asserted itself in a practical way. beftting the weakness of an eminently practical man.
 ''Dr. Norris" said he, on the eve of his departure, there is a result of this re- cent tragic occurrence to which your attention may not have been called. Mrs. Loring had only a life interest in the property left by her husband, for she had surrendered her dover rights. On her demise the estate passes to her husbands brother and sister, with whom, I regret to say, her relations were not amicable. Though she often told me that she proposed to lay aside part of her income in order to make provision for her niece, Miss Gray, it seems that she utterly neglected to put the plan in operation. In fact, sine lived very close to her income, and had it not been for reduction in her expenses on coming here, it is probable that the rev. enue coming from the property, cal culated to the day of her death, would not have suhiced to pay the outstanding claims against her. As it is, however, I find that there will be a balance of about $500, which will be at Miss Gray's disposal. It is very little for a young woman reared as she has been, but, un- fortunately, it is all that she can hope to receive from her aunt"
 "She must suffer, then, for another's careleesness." said I.
 'Atonernent for carelessness is too often vicarious." said the man of law. "It hardly lessens her I.is-ortune to realize that ii is a common one. Do you l:now whether she has ary hing in her 1 own right?''
 "Next to nothing. As I have said, Dr. Morris. the case is distressing one, and regret exceedingly that I must be the bearer of such bad news to the young lady. She is very likely to come for ad- vice to you, and it is to put you in pos session of the facts that I have spoken. A check for your services to my late client will be mailed to you immediately | upon my return to the city"
 ThereuDon the lawyer went his way, leaving me by no means so disheartened by his remarks as might have been the case with a man whose regard for Dorothy Gray was entirely platonic He was as good as his word in settling Mrs. LoriEg's affairs, and in a few days my check arrived. Another valuable bit of paper reached me about this time from very different source, enc from which it was decidedly unexpected. Jones, the mysterious farmland. in trusted it to the mails not long after I had seen him safely on train south bound from Bassettville. In parting he had thanked me with a good deal of heartiness for my attendance upon him. but had maintained his old reticenee as to the character of the business which had brought him to Rodneytown with results so disastrous to himself. The size of the check, though, was sufficient to prove that when he entered Mrs. Weston's employ he was in a position to care little for the pittance she paid him. Banks, too, received substantial token of the mans gratitude, but he was even less able than to guess what Jones' mission had been.
 CONTINUED TOMORROW.)