“I—I presume that is so,” agreed Mr. Starkweather.
“And it was wrong,” declared the girl, with all the confidence of youth. “Poor dad realized it before he died. It made all the firm’s creditors believe that he was guilty. No matter what he did thereafter——”
“Stop, girl!” exclaimed Mr. Starkweather. “Don’t you know that if you stir up this old business the scandal will all come to light? Why—why, even my name might be attached to it.”
“But poor dad suffered under the blight of it all for more than sixteen years.”
“Ahem! It is a fact. It was a great misfortune. Perhaps he was advised wrongly,” said Mr. Starkweather, with trembling lips. “But I want you to understand, Helen, that if he had not left the city he would undoubtedly have been in a cell when you were born.”
“I don’t know that that would have killed me—especially, if by staying here, he might have come to trial and been freed of suspicion.”
“But he could not be freed of suspicion.”
“Why not? I don’t see that the evidence was conclusive,” declared the girl, hotly. “At least, he knew of none such. And I want to know now every bit of evidence that could be brought against him.”
“Useless! Useless!” muttered her uncle, wiping his brow.
“It is not useless. My father was accused of a crime of which he wasn’t guilty. Why, his friends here—those who knew him in the old days—will think me the daughter of a criminal!”