"B—buzzing about it?" articulated Flame with some difficulty.

Expeditiously the Master of the House resumed his rending of the turkey.

"Are you really from the Rectory?" he questioned. "How amusing.... Well, there's nothing really you could do about it now.... The constable and his prisoner are already on their way to the County Seat—wherever that may be. And a freshly 'burgled' house is rather a creepy place for a young girl to return to all alone.... Your parents are away, I believe?"

"Con—stable ... constable," babbled Flame quite idiotically.

"Yes, the regular constable was off Christmasing somewhere it seems, so he put a substitute on his job, a stranger from somewhere. Some substitute that! No mulling over hot toddies on Christmas night for him! He saw the marauder crawling in through the Rectory window! He saw him fumbling now to the left, now to the right, all through the front hall! He followed him up the stairs to a closet where the silver was evidently kept! He caught the man red-handed as it were! Or rather—white-handed," flushed the Master of the House for some quite unaccountable reason. "To be perfectly accurate," he explained conscientiously, "he was caught with a pair of—of—" Delicately he spelt out the word. "With a pair of—c-o-r-s-e-t-s rolled up in his hand. But inside the roll it seemed there was a solid silver—very elaborate carving set which the Parish had recently presented. The wretch was just unrolling it,—them, when he was caught."

"That was Bertrand!" said Flame. "My Father's Lay Reader."

It was the man's turn now to jump to his feet.

"What?" he cried.

"I sent him for the carving knife," said Flame.

"What?" repeated the man. Consternation versus Hilarity went racing suddenly like a cat-and-dog combat across his eyes.

"Yes," said Flame.

From the outside door the sound of furious knocking occurred suddenly.

"That sounds to me like—like parents' knocking," shivered Flame.

"It sounds to me like an escaped Lay Reader," said her Host.

With a single impulse they both started for the door.

"Don't worry, Little Girl," whispered the young Stranger in the dark hall.

"I'll try not to," quivered Flame.

They were both right, it seemed.

It was Parents and the Lay Reader.

All three breathless, all three excited, all three reproachful,—they swept into the warm, balsam-scented Rattle-Pane House with a gust of frost, a threat of disaster.

"F—lame," sighed her Father.

"Flame!" scolded her Mother.

"Flame?" implored the Lay Reader.

"What a pretty name," beamed the Master of the House. "Pray be seated, everybody," he gestured graciously to left and right,—shoving one dog expeditiously under the table with his foot, while he yanked another out of a chair with his least gesticulating hand. "This is certainly a very great pleasure, I assure you," he affirmed distinctly to Miss Flamande Nourice. "Returning quite unexpectedly to my new house this lonely Christmas evening," he explained very definitely to the Rev. Flamande Nourice, "I can't express to you what it means to me to find this pleasant gathering of neighbors waiting here to welcome me! And when I think of the effort you must have made to get here, Mr. Bertrand," he beamed. "A young man of all your obligations and—complications—"

"Pleasant ... gathering of neighbors?" questioned Mrs. Nourice with some emotion.

"Oh, I forgot," deprecated the Master of the House with real concern. "Your Christmas season is not, of course, as inherently 'pleasant' as one might wish.... I was told at the railroad station how you and Mr. Nourice had been called away by the illness of a relative."

"We were called away," confided Mrs. Nourice with increasing asperity, "called away at considerable inconvenience—by a very sick relative—to receive the present of a Piebald pony."

"Oh, goody!" quickened Flame and collapsed again under the weight of her Mother's glance.

"And then came this terrible telephone message," shuddered her Mother. "The implied dishonor of one of your Father's most trusted—most trusted associates!"

"I was right in the midst of such an interesting book," deplored her Father. "And Uncle Wally wouldn't lend it."

"So we borrowed Uncle Wally's new automobile and started right for home!" explained her Mother. "It was at the Junction that we made connections with the Constable and his prisoner."

"His—victim," intercepted the Lay Reader coldly.

At this interception everybody turned suddenly and looked at the Lay Reader. His mouth was twisted very slightly to one side. It gave him a rather unpleasant snarling expression. If this expression had been vocal instead of muscular it would have shocked his hearers.

"Your Father had to go on board the train and identify him," persisted Flame's Mother. "It was very distressing.... The Constable was most unwilling to release him. Your Father had to use every kind of an argument."

"Every ... kind," mused her Father. "He doesn't even deny being in the house," continued her Mother, "being in my closet, ... being caught with a—a—"

"With a silver carving knife and fork in his hand," intercepted the Lay Reader hastily.

"Yet all the time he persists," frowned Flame's Mother, "that there is some one in the world who can give a perfectly good explanation if only,—he won't even say 'he or she' but 'it', if only 'it' would."

Something in the stricken expression of her daughter's face brought a sudden flicker of suspicion to the Mother's eyes.

"You don't know anything about this, do you, Flame?" she demanded. "Is it remotely possible that after your promise to me,—your sacred promise to me—?" The whole structure of the home,—of mutual confidence,—of all the Future itself, crackled and toppled in her voice.

To the Lay Reader's face, and right through the Lay Reader's face, to the face of the Master of the House, Flame's glance went homing with an unaccountable impulse.

With one elbow leaning casually on the mantle-piece, his narrowed eyes faintly inscrutable, faintly smiling, it seemed suddenly to the young Master of the House that he had been waiting all his discouraged years for just that glance. His heart gave the queerest jump.

Flame's face turned suddenly very pink.

Like a person in a dream, she turned back to her Mother. There was a smile on her face, but even the smile was the smile of a dreaming person.

"No—Mother," she said, "I haven't seen Bertrand ... to-day."

"Why, you're looking right at him now!" protested her exasperated Mother.

With a gentle murmur of dissent, Flame's Father stepped forward and laid his arm across the young girl's shoulder. "She—she may be looking at him," he said. "But I'm almost perfectly sure that she doesn't ... see him."

"Why, whatever in the world do you mean?" demanded his wife. "Whatever in the world does anybody mean? If there was only another woman here! A mature ... sane woman! A——" With a flare of accusation she turned from Flame to the Master of the House. "This Miss Flora that my daughter spoke of,—where is she? I insist on seeing her! Please summon her instantly!"

Crossing genially to the table the Master of the House reached down and dragged out the Bull Dog by the brindled scuff of her neck. The scratch on her nose was still bleeding slightly. And one eye was closed.

"This is—Miss Flora!" he said.

Indignantly Flame's Mother glanced at the dog, and then from her daughter's face to the face of the young man again.

"And you call that—a lady?" she demanded.

"N—not technically," admitted the young man.

For an instant a perfectly tense silence reigned. Then from under a shadowy basket the Cat crept out, shining, sinuous, with extended paw, and began to pat a sprig of holly cautiously along the floor.

Yielding to the reaction Flame bent down suddenly and hugging the Wolf Hound's head to her breast buried her face in the soft, sweet shagginess.

"Not sanitary, Mother?" she protested. "Why, they're as sanitary as—as violets!"

As though dreaming he were late to church and had forgotten his vestments, Flame's Father reached out nervously and draped a great string of ground-pine stole-like about his neck.

"We all," broke in the Master of the House quite irrelevantly, "seem to have experienced a slight twinge of irritability—the past few minutes. Hunger, I've no doubt!... So suppose we all sit down together to this sumptuous—if somewhat chilled repast? After the soup certainly, even after very cold soup, all explanations I'm sure will be—cheerfully and satisfactorily exchanged. Miss—Flame I know has a most amusing story to tell and—"

"Oh, yes!" rallied Flame. "And it's almost all about being blindfolded and sending poor Mr. Lorello—"

"So if by any chance, Mr.—Mr. Bertrand," interrupted the Master of the House a bit abruptly, "you happen to have the carving knife and fork still on your person ... I thought I saw a white string hanging—"

"I have!" said the Lay Reader with his first real grin.

With great formality the Master of the House drew back a chair and bowed Flame's Mother to it.

Then suddenly the Red Setter lifted his sensitive nose in the air, and the spotted Dalmatian bristled faintly across the ridge of his back. Through the whole room, it seemed, swept a curious cottony sense of Something-About-to-Happen! Was it that a sound hushed? Or that a hush decided suddenly to be a sound?

With a little sharp catch of her breath Flame dashed to the window, and swung the sash upward! Where once had breathed the drab, dusty smell of frozen grass and mud quickened suddenly a curious metallic dampness like the smell of new pennies.

"Mr. ... Delcote!" she called.

In an instant his slender form silhouetted darkly with hers in the open window against the eternal mystery and majesty of a Christmas night.

"And then the snow came!"

END