"See here! you're not going to leave this house until I know just what you are driving at," roared the lawyer. "I won't have you besmirching my fair name!"
"Your fair name!" returned Sam, sarcastically. "There is no necessity for you to talk that way, Mr. Fogg. I know you thoroughly. If you want to rake up the past you can do it, but I advise you not to do so."
"I—I——" began the lawyer, and then stopped, not knowing how to proceed.
"We might as well go," broke in Songbird. "But perhaps, Mr. Fogg, you haven't heard the end of this," added the would-be poet of Brill; and though the lawyer continued to storm and argue, the two chums left the house and were soon on the return to Brill.
"I'm afraid we didn't gain anything by that move," was Sam's comment, as they rode along. "He'll be on his guard now, and that will make it harder than ever to connect him with this affair—provided he really is mixed up in it."
"He acted pretty startled when we put it up to him," returned Songbird. He heaved a deep sigh. "Well, maybe some day this matter will be cleared up, but it doesn't look like it now."
Several days passed, and Sam stuck to his lessons as hard as ever. Once or twice he thought of calling up Grace at Hope or of writing her a note, but each time he put it off, why, he could not exactly explain even to himself. But then came a rift in the clouds and the sun shone as brightly as ever. A note came from Grace, which he read with much satisfaction. A part of the communication ran as follows:
"I was thinking all manner of mean things about you because you did not answer my note of last week, when—what do you think? The note came back to me, brought in by one of the smaller girls here, Jessie Brown. Jessie was going to town that day, and I gave her the note to post and she put it in the pocket of her coat, along with several other letters, so she says. Well, the pocket had a hole in it, and, as you might know, my own particular letter had to slip through that hole into the lining of the coat. The rest of the letters were mailed, but my letter remained in the lining until this morning, when Jessie came to me with tears in her eyes to tell of what had happened. I felt pretty angry over it, but glad to know that you were not guilty of having received the note and then not answering it.
"In the note I told you how sorry I was to find that you had called here while I was away. You see, Ada Waltham's brother, Chester, came on in his new automobile—a big foreign affair, very splendid. He wanted to give Ada a ride, and invited me to go along, so I went, and we had a very nice time. Chester is an expert auto driver, and the way we flew along over the roads was certainly marvelous. He insisted upon it that we dine with him. And, oh, Sam! such a spread as it was!
"You know he is a millionaire in his own right (Ada has a great lot of money too). We certainly had one grand time, and I shall never forget it. He got a beautiful bouquet for the table, and also bouquets for Ada and me to take home, along with boxes of the most beautiful chocolates I ever ate. But just the same, I am awfully sorry I wasn't at the seminary when you called, and I don't understand why you haven't been up since, or why you didn't telephone to me.
"One of the girls here says they are organizing the Brill baseball nine for the coming season, and that they want you to play as you did last year. If you do join the nine, I hope you have the same success or more. And you can rest assured that I will be on the grandstand to offer you all the encouragement possible. I hope that Dick and Tom come on to see the game and bring Dora and Nellie along, and then we can have the nicest kind of a jolly party. Ada Waltham, as you may know, loves baseball games too, and she says that she is going to have Chester here at that time to take her over to Brill, unless somebody else turns up to accompany her."
"All right, as far as it goes," mused Sam, on reading this note. "But I wish Chester Waltham would stay away. Of course I can't blame Grace for liking a ride in a big, foreign car and being invited out to such a first-class spread as she mentions, but, just the same, I wish she wouldn't go with him."
However, the communication brightened his thoughts considerably, and it was only a little while later when he talked to the girl over the telephone and made an arrangement for a ride in the automobile on the following Saturday afternoon, Songbird and Minnie to accompany them.