subject of their conversation, Peewee reasoned. The door from the library into the hall was closed; the voices reached him circuitously through an adjoining room whose door was evidently open. But it was unmistakable now that the deeper and more readily distinguished voice, which spoke in answer to Beman's, was Jeffrey's. Peewee did not dare to remain listening on the stairs because of the servants who passed frequently through the hall below. He went on downstairs into the front room below and seated himself on the window sill behind the curtains. He would be thought by anyone who saw him there to be merely looking out at the window, and now he could hear the voices plainly.
"But Walter acknowledged the boy," Jeffrey was saying, incredulously.
Peewee in his interest strained to listen.
"He appears to have done that merely on the statement of the woman." This was Beman's strong old voice, slightly cracked with age.
"The woman," Peewee comprehended, could not be Mrs. Markyn; Beman would have called
