One morning in April Niel was alone in the law office. His uncle had
been ill with rheumatic fever for a long while, and he had been
attending to the routine of business.
The door opened, and a figure stood there, strange and yet familiar,--he
had to think a moment before he realized that it was Orville Ogden, who
used to come to Sweet Water so often, but who had not been seen there
now for several years. He didn't look a day older; one eye was still
direct and clear, the other clouded and oblique. He still wore a stiff
imperial and twisted moustache, the grey colour of old beeswax, and his
thin hair was brushed heroically up over the bald spot.
"This is Judge Pommeroy's nephew, isn't it? I can't think of your name,
my boy, but I remember you. Is the Judge out?"
"Please be seated, Mr. Ogden. My uncle is ill. He hasn't been at the
office for several months. He's had really a very bad time of it. Is
there anything I can do for you?"
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that! I'm sorry." He spoke as if he were. "I
guess all we fellows are getting older, whether we like it or not. It
made a great difference when Daniel Forrester went." Mr. Ogden took off
his overcoat, put his hat and gloves neatly on the desk, and then seemed
somewhat at a loss. "What is your uncle's trouble?" he asked suddenly.
Niel told him. "I was to have gone back to school this winter, but uncle
begged me to stay and look after things for him. There was no one here
he wanted to entrust his business to."
"I see, I see," said Mr. Ogden thoughtfully. "Then you do attend to his
business for the present?" He paused and reflected. "Yes, there was
something that I wanted to take up with him. I am stopping off for a few
hours only, between trains. I might speak to you about it, and you could
consult your uncle and write me in Chicago. It's a confidential matter,
and concerns another person."
Niel assured him of his discretion, but Mr. Ogden seemed to find the
subject difficult to approach. He looked very grave and slowly lit a
cigar.
"It is simply," he said at last, "a rather delicate suggestion I wish to
make to your uncle about one of his clients. I have several friends in
the Government at Washington just at present, friends who would go out
of their way to serve me. I have been thinking that we might manage it
to get a special increase of pension for Mrs. Forrester. I am due in
Chicago this week, and after my business there is finished, I would be
quite willing to go on to Washington to see what can be done; provided,
of course, that no one, least of all your uncle's client, knows of my
activity in the matter."
Niel flushed. "I'm sorry, Mr. Ogden," he brought out, "but Mrs.
Forrester is no longer a client of my uncle's. After the Captain's
death, she saw fit to take her business away from him."
Mr. Ogden's normal eye became as blank as the other.
"What's that? He isn't her lawyer? Why, for twenty years--"
"I know that, sir. She didn't treat him with much consideration. She
transferred her business very abruptly."
"To whom, may I ask?"
"To a lawyer here in town; Ivy Peters."
"Peters? I never heard of him."
"No, you wouldn't have. He wasn't one of the people who went to the
Forrester house in the old days. He's one of the younger generation, a
few years older than I. He rented part of the Forresters' land for
several years before the Captain's death,--was their tenant. That was
how Mrs. Forrester came to know him. She thinks him a good business
man."