“Aye. But I watched your mother. I know how much she missed the gentler things she had been brought up to. Had I been able to pay off those old creditors while she was alive, she might have gone back.
“And yet,” the ranchman sighed, “the stigma is there. The blot is still on your father’s name, Snuggy. People in New York still believe that I was dishonest. They believe that with the proceeds of my dishonesty I came out here and went into the cattle business.
“You see, my dear? Even the settling with our old creditors—the creditors of Grimes & Morrell—made suspicion wag her tongue more eagerly than ever. I paid every cent, with interest compounded to the date of settlement. Grimes had long since had himself cleared of his debts and started over again. I do not know even that he and Starkweather know that I have been able to clear up the whole matter.
“However, as I say, the stain upon my reputation remains. I could never explain my flight. I could never imagine what became of the money. Somebody embezzled it, and I was the one who ran away. Do you see, my dear?”
And Helen told him that she did see, and assured him again and again of her entire trust in his honor. But Mr. Morrell died with the worry of the old trouble—the trouble that had driven him across the continent—heavy upon his mind.
And now it was serving to make Helen’s mind most uneasy. The crime of which her father had been accused was continually in her thoughts.
Who had really been guilty of the embezzlement? The bookkeeper, who disappeared? Fenwick Grimes, the partner? Or, Who?
As the Rose pony—her own favorite mount—took Helen Morrell up the bluff path to the View on this evening, the remembrance of this long talk with her father before he died was running in the girl’s mind.
Perhaps she was a girl who would naturally be more seriously impressed than most, at sixteen. She had been brought up among older people. She was a wise little thing when she was a mere toddler.
And after her mother’s death she had been her father’s daily companion until she was old enough to be sent away to be educated. The four long terms at the Denver school had carried Helen Morrell (for she had a quick mind) through those grades which usually prepare girls for college.