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Several reporters of local papers, attracted by the mention of the McIntyre name, as well as by the twins' appearance, watched the scene with keen expectancy, eager for early morning "copy." As the Assistant District Attorney rose to question Helen McIntyre, the Judge addressed him. "Is the prisoner represented by counsel?" he asked. For reply the burglar shook his head.
"What promise was that, then?" cried old McIntyre suspiciously. "Never you mind, papa. But if you forget it, Robert, I shall never forgive you as long as I live."
"Gentlemen," he said, "Mr. McIntyre has been kind enough to convince me that in this matter you are absolutely right and the Peter Carhart interests absolutely wrong. As far as I am concerned you can keep your ranches to the rest of your days."
It is as well our friends should not see you in your present frame of mind." Helen regarded her father under lowered lids. "Very well," she said submissively and walked toward the door; on reaching it she paused, and spoke over her shoulder. "Don't try me too far, father." McIntyre stared for a full minute at the doorway through which Helen took her departure.
"And to think that I aided Sylvester's plot to gain the securities by engaging him as our clerk," groaned Rochester. "It was clever of him to seek employment here," agreed Kent. "But like many crooks he over-reached himself through over-confidence. Must you go, Colonel McIntyre?" "Yes." McIntyre walked over to Helen. "My dear little girl," he began and his voice was husky with feeling.
She was dressed with fastidious taste, and as she mounted the platform after the morgue master had administered the oath, Coroner Penfield rose and, with a polite gesture, indicated the chair she was to occupy. "I am Helen McIntyre," she announced clearly. "Daughter of Colonel Charles McIntyre."
"It is a common enough story in this country. The little baby was five months old, singularly bright and attractive. McIntyre himself was quite foolish about it; and, indeed, the whole congregation were quite worked up over it. Took suddenly ill, some mysterious trouble; no doctor within forty miles; before he arrived the baby was gone. They were dreadfully cut up about it."
Everyone also knew that McIntyre's whole concern belonged to himself, and that he collected the fees in every class on Friday morning, that he took home what was over after paying his assistants, and that butcher meat for the McIntyre family next week depended on the result.
Colonel McIntyre had planned to bring the twins, then at school in Paris, home himself, but business had kept him in the West and he had cabled to a spinster cousin to chaperon them on the trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Nor had he reached New York in time to see them disembark, and thus had missed meeting Mrs. Brewster, then in her first year of widowhood.
"Laura S. McIntyre." She had hardly sealed her letter before her father and Robert returned. She closed the door behind them, and made them a little curtsey. "I await my family's congratulations," she said, with her head in the air. "Mr. Raffles Haw has been here, and he has asked me to be his wife." "The deuce he did!" cried the old man. "And you said ?" "I am to see him again."
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