A more argumentative and insistent letter from Messrs. Blair and Jamieson was answered with the same brief positiveness by Messrs. Ampersand, Boiling and Byrd.  Thereafter, no more communications were exchanged by the attorneys.  But a day or two after her second refusal, Sharlee Weyland received another letter about the matter of dispute, this time a more personal one.  The envelope was directed in a small neat hand which she knew very well; she had first seen it on sheets of yellow paper in Mrs. Paynter’s dining-room.  The letter said: 

     DEAR Miss WEYLAND:—–­

Your refusal to allow my father’s estate to restore to you, so far as it can, the money which it took from you, and thus to right, in part, a grave wrong, is to me a great surprise and disappointment.  I had not thought it possible that you, upon due reflection, could take a position the one obvious effect of which is to keep a son permanently under the shadow of his father’s dishonor.

Do not, of course, misunderstand me.  I have known you too well to believe for a moment that you can be swayed by ungenerous motives.  I am very sure that you are taking now the part which you believe most generous.  But that view is, I assure you, so far from the real facts that I can only conclude that you have refused to learn what these facts are.  Both legally and morally the money is yours.  No one else on earth has a shadow of claim to it.  I most earnestly beg that, in fairness to me, you will at least give my attorneys the chance to convince yours that what I write here is true and unanswerable.

Should you adhere to your present position, the money will, of course, be trusteed for your benefit, nor will a penny of it be touched until it is accepted, if not by you, then by your heirs or assigns.  But I cannot believe that you will continue to find magnanimity in shirking your just responsibilities, and denying to me my right to wipe out this stain.

     Very truly yours,

     HENRY G. SURFACE, Jr.

No answer ever came to this letter, and there the matter rested through March and into the sultry April.

XXXI

God moves in a Mysterious Way:  how the Finished Miss Avery appears as the Instrument of Providence; how Sharlee sees her Idol of Many Years go toppling in the Dust, and how it is her Turn to meditate in the Still Watches.

The print danced before his outraged eyes; his chest heaved at the revolting evidence of man’s duplicity; and Charles Gardiner West laid down his morning’s Post with a hand that shook.

Meachy T. Bangor announces his candidacy for the nomination for Mayor, subject to the Democratic primary.