that Myrtle Hazard would eventually come to apart at least of this inheritance.  For the story was, that he was paying his court to the young lady whenever he got an opportunity, and that he was cultivating an intimacy with Miss Cynthia Badlam.  “Bradshaw would n’tmake a move in that direction,” Mr. Penhallow said to himself, “until he felt pretty sure that it was going to be a paying business.  If he was only a young minister now, there’d be no difficulty about it.  Let any man, young or old, in a clerical white cravat, step up to Myrtle Hazard, and ask her to be miserable in his company through this wretched life, and aunt Silence would very likely give them her blessing, and add something to it that the man in the white cravat would think worth even more than that was.  But I don’t know what she’ll say to Bradshaw.  Perhaps he ’d better have a hint to go to meeting a little more regularly.  However, I suppose he knows what he’s about.”

He was thinking all this over when a visitor was announced, and Mr. Byles Gridley entered the study.

“Good evening, Mr. Penhallow,” Mr. Gridley said, wiping his forehead.  “Quite warm, is n’t it, this evening?”

“Warm!” said Mr. Penhallow, “I should think it would freeze pretty thick to-night.  I should have asked you to come up to the fire and warm yourself.  But take off your coat, Mr. Gridley,—­very glad to see you.  You don’t come to the house half as often as you come to the office.  Sit down, sit down.”

Mr. Gridley took off his outside coat and sat down.  “He does look warm, does n’t he?” Mr. Penhallow thought.  “Wonder what has heated up the old gentleman so.  Find out quick enough, for he always goes straight to business.”

“Mr. Penhallow,” Mr. Gridley began at once, “I have come on a very grave matter, in which you are interested as well as myself, and I wish to lay the whole of it before you as explicitly as I can, so that we may settle this night before I go what is to be done.  I am afraid the good standing of your partner, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, is concerned in the matter.  Would it be a surprise to you, if he had carried his acuteness in some particular case like the one I am to mention beyond the prescribed limits?”

The question was put so diplomatically that there was no chance for an indignant denial of the possibility of Mr. Bradshaw’s being involved in any discreditable transaction.

“It is possible,” he answered, “that Bradshaw’s keen wits may have betrayed him into sharper practice than I should altogether approve in any business we carried on together.  He is a very knowing young man, but I can’t think he is foolish enough, to say nothing of his honesty, to make any false step of the kind you seem to hint.  I think he might on occasion go pretty near the line, but I don’t believe he would cross it.”

“Permit me a few questions, Mr. Penhallow.  You settled the estate of the late Malachi Withers, did you not?”