In the third room, lying in a roll of blankets on a tumbled cot, a pink, fat baby slept, one fist in his dewy mouth. The red-gold down was thick on his round head; he looked like a wax Christ-child for a Christmas tree.

Caroline sighed ecstatically.

"Isn't he lovely!" she breathed.

"He's a fine child," the woman agreed. "And his mother never saw him, poor little thing. Nor his father either, for that matter."

Caroline looked in amazement toward the kitchen.

"Never laid his eyes on him," the woman went on sadly, "as if it was any good, to blame the poor baby! He's taken a terrible grudge on the little thing. He was awfully fond of his wife, though. He told me he was going to leave him right here, and then, of course, somebody in the house would notify the police, if I didn't take him to the Foundling. And of course he'd get better care, for that matter—there's no doubt about that. It's too bad. There's people that would give their eyes for a fine baby like that, you know."

"I know it," said Caroline simply, "my cousin Richard would be glad to have him—he wants one very much. But he's very particular."

The woman looked at her sharply. "What do you mean?" she asked. "How particular?"

Suddenly she laughed nervously. "I ought to be ashamed of myself," she said, "you ought to be at the police station now. But I'm all worn out, and it does me good to talk to anybody. I don't let the neighbors in much—it's a cheap set of people around here, and Mr. Williston's different from them and I hate to hear him talking to them the way he will. He don't know what he's doing. He tells 'em all about that prize—and it's true, you know, he did get it; that's what they married on, and he thought he could get plenty more that way, and then he never sold another story. It was too bad. He's a real gentleman, though you might not think it to look at him now, not shaved, and all. He thought he could earn a thousand every week, I s'pose, poor fellow. He got work in a department store, fin'ly, and it took all he made to bury her. She was a sweet little thing, but soft. I was real sorry for 'em."

She wiped her eyes hastily.

"Do you know whether he went to Harvard?" Caroline inquired, in a business-like tone.

The woman was heating some milk in a bottle, over a lamp, and did not answer her, but a voice from the door brought her sharply around. The young man stood there. Though still unshaven, he was otherwise quite changed. His hair was parted neatly, his coat brushed, his face no longer flushed, but pale and composed.

"If your extraordinary question refers to me, yes, I went to Harvard," he said in a grating, disagreeable voice. "I have in fact been called a 'typical Harvard man.' But that was some time ago. May I ask who you are?"

The woman lifted the bottle from the tin cup that held it and picked up the baby; the young man shifted his eyes from her immediately and looked persistently over Caroline's head.

"Her family's coachman's name is Hunt," said the woman, "and she thought he lived here, she says. He'd no business to go off and leave her alone. Her family'd be worried to death. When I go out with the baby I'll take her. I suppose you haven't changed your mind about the baby, Mr. Williston?—now you're feeling more like yourself," she added.

"I cannot discuss that subject, Mrs. Ufford," the young man answered, in his rasping, unnatural voice. "When you have disposed of the matter along the lines you yourself suggested, I am at your service till you take the train. After that—after that"—his lips tightened in a disagreeable smile—"I may be able to get to work—and win another prize!"

"There, there!" she cautioned him, "don't talk about that, Mr. Williston, don't, now! Why don't you go out with the little girl and see if you can find her automobile? That'll be less for me to do. Why don't you?"

He turned, muttering something about his hat, but Caroline tugged at his coat.

"Wait, wait!" she urged him, "I want you to tell her to let me take the baby! If you went to Harvard, that's all Cousin Richard said, except about a gentleman"—she paused and scrutinized him a moment. "You are a gentleman, aren't you?" she asked.

He looked at her. "My father was," he answered briefly. "In my own case, I have grave doubts. What do you think?" he asked the woman, looking no lower than her eyes.

She fed the baby deftly. "Oh, Mr. Williston, don't talk so—of course you're a gentleman!" she cried, "you couldn't help about the money. You did your best."

His mouth twisted pitifully.

"That'll do," he said, "what does this child mean? Who is your cousin? Where does he live?"

"He lives on Madison Avenue," Caroline began eagerly, "but I mustn't tell you his last name, you know, because he doesn't want you to know. That's just it. But he'd love the baby. I could take it right back in the automobile."

The man felt in under his coat and detached from his waistcoat a small gold pin. He tore a strip of wrapping paper from the open box near him and wrote rapidly on it.

"There," he said, fastening the pin into the folded paper, "I'm glad I never pawned it. If your cousin is a Harvard man, the pin will be enough, but he can look me up from this paper—all he wants. They're all dead but me, though. Here, wait a moment!"

He went back into the sitting room and fumbled in a heap of waste paper on the floor, picked out of it a stiff sheet torn once through, and attached it with the gold pin to the bit of writing.

"That's her marriage certificate," he said to the woman. She stared at him.

"Mr. Williston, do you believe that child?" she burst out, loosening her hold on the bottle in her hand. "Why, she may be making it all up! I—I—you must be crazy! You don't even know her name! I won't allow it—"

He broke into her excited remonstrance gravely.

"I don't believe a child could make up such details, in the first place, Mrs. Ufford," he said, "she is repeating something she's heard, I think. Did your cousin mention anything else?" he said abruptly to Caroline.

She smiled gratefully at him. "The mother must be a good woman," she quoted placidly.

Both of them started.

"Do you think a child would invent that?" he demanded. "Now, see here. You take Mrs. Ufford home with you in the automobile and she can see if there's anything in what you say, really. If there's not, she can go right on with the—with it, and do as—as we arranged before. It's all written on the paper, and my full consent to the adoption, and if there's anything legal to do about it, Mrs. Ufford can attend to it. But nobody'll trouble 'em—they can be sure of that. My people all died long ago and—and hers—hers...."

He stopped short. With eyes filled and lips vaguely moving he fell into a strange revery, a sort of tranced stupor. So intense were his absent thoughts that they impressed the woman and the child; they knew that he was back in the past and waited patiently while for a few kind moments he forgot. At length his eyes shifted and he took up his broken phrase, unconscious, evidently, of the pause. "—her's are back in New England. They never knew.... I had some pride. They're the I-told-you-so sort, anyhow. And they told her, all right. Oh yes, they told her! Narrow-minded, God-fearing prigs!" He stared at Mrs. Ufford curiously. "But they paid their debts, all the same," he added with a harsh laugh, "and that's more than I've been able to do, I suppose you're thinking."

But almost before the dark red had flushed her tired, lined face, he leaned forward and touched her shoulder kindly.

"I didn't mean that," he apologized. "I'm half crazy, I think. You've been as good as gold, and even when I've paid you the money I owe you, I'll owe you more than I can ever pay. I know that. And you're New England, too."

His sudden softening encouraged the woman, and she looked appealingly up at him, while she patted the bundle on her lap.

"Folks have hearts in New England, Mr. Williston," she began, "and if you was to go to her folks or write to 'em, I guess you'd find—oh, couldn't you?"

His impatient hand checked her.

"He might grow up to be a real comfort to you," she murmured persistently, "and you could look out for him well enough, once you get started. Just see how smart you are, Mr. Williston—look at that prize you got; she was awful proud of it."

His face twisted painfully.

"I looked out for her well, didn't I?" he said coldly, "I was a 'good provider,' as they say up there, wasn't I? Do you think—" his voice rang harshly and he struck the table by his side till it rattled on its unsteady legs—"do you think if I couldn't look out for her, I would look out for that? Get it ready."

The woman rose, her lips pressed together, and rolled the blankets tightly about the quiet child. With one gesture she put on a shabby hat and pinned it to her hair.

"I'll leave the bottle with you," she said to Caroline; "it'll help keep him quiet, when I'm gone. Come on."

The man turned away his head as they passed him. At the outer door she paused a moment, and her face softened.

"I know how you feel, Mr. Williston, and I don't judge you," she said gently, "for the Lord knows you've had more than your share of trouble. But won't you kiss it once before—before it's too late? It's your child, you know. Don't you feel—"

"I feel one thing," he cried out, and the bitterness of his voice frightened Caroline; "I feel that it murdered her! Take it away!"

They shrank through the door.

The woman sobbed once or twice on the stairs, but Caroline patted the flannel bundle excitedly.

They had rounded the corner in a moment, and the woman pointed ahead with her free hand.

"Is that the automobile?" she asked.

Caroline nodded. The brougham stood empty and alone where she had left it.

"They're not back yet!" she cried in disgust, "the idea!"

"Maybe they're looking for you," Mrs. Ufford said shortly.

"Aren't you glad we've got it?" Caroline inquired timidly. "I am, awfully. I didn't expect to get such a good one, so soon," she went on more easily, "but I don't like that man much. He's so cross."

"Child, child, you don't know what you're talkin' about!" the woman cried impatiently. "He's not cross—but his heart's just about broke. He thinks more money would've saved her. And I guess he's right about that. She was a soft little thing. But she stuck to him."

They walked a few steps in silence.

"I don't know as I was actin' right, either, to talk as I did," she continued abruptly. "I s'pose it is better as 'tis, 'specially if your folks will take the baby. They'll do a lot more for it than ever he could, prob'ly. I s'pose they're real rich—regular swells? I can see they've got a fine automobile."

"Oh, yes. Cousin Richard's very rich," Caroline answered, indifferently, "that's only the brougham—there are two more. I have more fun at Aunt Edith's, though."

"'Twas queer about all those things your cousin wanted, wasn't it?" the woman said, musingly. "'Seemed like kind of a sign to him, I could see—going to Harvard College and all. I s'pose it was a sign—maybe."

She walked slowly, perhaps because of her burden.

"That's a fine college, I s'pose?" she said, inquiringly.

"It's good enough," Caroline allowed, "of course Yale's the best. We all go to Yale. Uncle Joe says there had to be something for Yale to beat, so they founded Harvard!"

"You don't say," Mrs. Ufford returned, "that's funny."

They were very near the brougham now. It stood as deserted as when Caroline had left it. The baby in the bundled blanket neither cried nor stirred.

"He's the best child," said the woman, with her tired, kindly smile. "He's next to nothing to tend to. If he'd felt to go back to her folks with it, I'd 'a' gone with him to look after it. I've got enough for that—the things sold real well, and he'd never let me lose, anyhow. He isn't that kind. I took a real likin' to both of 'em. I've kept boarders, all over, for fifteen years and I never lost a cent from anybody like him, not one. You get to know all sorts, keepin' boarders, and Mr. Williston's all right—though you mightn't think so," she ended loyally.

Caroline hardly listened. She saw herself in the bearskin reception room, up the stairs, in the library, her baby in her arms; she heard the incredulous joy of the Duchess, she explained importantly with convincing detail, to Cousin Richard the critical. To her eager soul this thin, friendly woman was merely an incident; that irritable, incoherent man less than a dream.

They paused on the curb, and she opened the brougham door hospitably.

"You get in first," she said, "and then I can hold him a little while, can't I?"

"I never was in one o' these," Mrs. Ufford answered doubtfully, "s'pose you go in first. It can't go—or back, or anything, can it?"

"No, no, of course not," said Caroline impatiently. "There's Hunt 'way up the street—he doesn't see us—how he's hurrying!"

The woman paused, her foot on the broad step.

"'Taint Hunt—it's Mr. Williston," she announced. "What's he want, I wonder? Look—he's wavin' at us! I guess he forgot some paper he wants you to take—he's bound to have it legal," she added with a sigh. "No, dear, let me be. I'll see what he wants before I get in."

The young man was running fast; his face was red, his eyes anxious.

"Have you got it? Is it here?" he cried, panting, and as she lifted the bundle high, his face cleared and Caroline saw that he was very handsome.

"Oh, Mrs. Ufford," he gasped, "read this! Just read it! I found it in my pocket-book—I thought you might be gone—she put it there for me—my poor little Lou! My God, what a brute—what a brute!"

The woman, one foot still on the step of the brougham, supported the child on her raised knee and held the paper in her free hand.

"My dearest husband," she read aloud, "if I get well you will never see this, for I will take it out, but I don't believe I will take it out, for I don't believe I will get well. They say everybody thinks they will die, and of course a great many don't, but some do, and I think I will, I don't know why, but I am sure. But you will have the little girl. I am sure she will be a girl, and I hope she will look like me and be a comfort to you. You will take good care of her, I know. Think how nicely you took care of me and how hard you worked. You take her to my sister, and when she gets big enough, then you take her. She will not be a burden for you will earn lots of money when you can stop working in that horrid store on my account, and have time to do your writing. You must not get discouraged, for your writing is fine. Remember that prize you took. They will all be proud of you some day. You have been so good to me. Your loving wife, Lou."

Her voice broke, and with no further word she held the child out to the young man. Without a word he took it and stared eagerly into its face, pushing the wrappings aside.

"He has her eyes," he murmured, "Lou's eyes!"

The baby felt the grip of a stronger arm, wrinkled its features and appeared to scan the dark, trembling face above it.

"He knows me! Mrs. Ufford, he knows me!" cried the man.

"Maybe so, maybe so," she said, soothingly. "You'll keep him, won't you, now?"

"Keep him? Keep him?" he repeated, "why he's all I've got of hers—all! He's Lou's and mine, together! He's—"

"Hush, hush!" she warned him, "here's a crowd already! We're right out in the street, Mr. Williston! Come back with me. Yes, keep him if you want to."

She turned to Caroline, neglected and wide-eyed, in the brougham.

"You see how it is, dear," she said hastily, "he wants it, after all. I can't help bein' glad. It ain't always that money does the most, you know. And he's the baby's father. Don't you mind, will you?"

Caroline gulped.

"I—I guess not," she answered bravely. "But I did want him!"

"I know. You meant all right," the woman assured her. "You're real—there's your coachman runnin'. He saw the crowd gatherin', prob'ly. Good-by, dear."

She slipped through the curious street children after the tall figure that hurried on with his bundle, a block ahead. Gleggson dashed up to the brougham.

"W'ere was you, Miss, for goodness' sake?" he gasped out, "h'I've been h'all over after yer! Don't, don't tell Hunt on me, will you, Miss? He'd fair kill the life out o' me! He's comin' now. 'e 'ad to go, Miss, fer his little boy was took sick last night and callin' for 'im. So 'e made up the errant. But it'll cost us both our place, y' know, Miss!"

The man's voice shook. Hunt was very near them now, walking hard.

"I'd no business to leave, I know—will you h'overlook it for once, Miss, and keep mum?" the man pleaded.

"All right, Gleggson—all right," she said wearily, "I won't tell."

Confused, disappointed, and yet with a curious sense of joy in the joy of the two even now rounding the corner, she leaned back in the brougham.

"I'm afraid he'll go to Harvard, anyway," she sighed.



IV

WHERE THIEVES BREAK IN.

One glance at Caroline's shoulders, hunched with caution, the merest profile, indeed, of her tense and noiseless advance up the narrow gravel path, would have convinced the most casual observer that she was bent upon arson, at the least. At the occasional crunch of the gravel she scowled; the well meant effort of a speckled gray hen, escaped from some distant part of the grounds, to bear her company, produced a succession of pantomimic dismissals that alarmed the hen to the point of frenzy, so that her clacks and cackles resounded far beyond the trim hedge that separated the drying-ground from the little kitchen garden.

Caroline scowled, turned to shake her fist at the hen, now lumbering awkwardly through the hedge, and sat down heavily on a little bed of parsley.

"Nasty old thing!" she gulped, "anybody could've heard me! And I was creeping up so still...."

She peered out from behind a dwarf evergreen and made a careful survey of the situation. The big square house stood placid and empty in the afternoon sun; not a cat on the kitchen porch, not a curtain fluttering from an open window. All was neat, quiet and deserted. Caroline set her lips with decision.

"We'll pretend there wasn't any hen," she said, in a low voice, "and go on from here, just the same."

Rising with great caution she picked her way, crouching and dodging, from bush to bush; occasionally she took a lightning peep at the silent house, then dipped again and continued her stalking. Following the evergreen hedge around a final corner, she emerged stealthily in the lee of the latticed kitchen porch and drew a breath of relief.

"All right so far," she muttered; "I wonder if that old gray cat with the new kittens is fussing around here?"

But no breath of life stirred under the porch as she stooped to peer through a break in the lattice, and with a final survey of the premises, inserted her plump person into the gap and wriggled, panting, into the darkness below.

It was stuffy and dusty there; the light filtered dimly through the diamond spaces, and the adventurer, crawling on hands and knees, bumped into a shadowy pile of flower-pots, sneezed violently and grovelled wrathfully among the ruins for at least five minutes, helplessly confused. Quite by accident she knocked her cobwebbed head against a narrow, outward swinging window, seized it thankfully, and plunged through it. Hanging a moment by her grimy hands she swayed, a little fearfully, then dropped with a quick breath to the concrete floor beneath, and smiled with relief as the comparative brightness of a well kept cellar revealed her safety. Vegetable bins, a neat pile of kindling wood, a large portable closet of wire netting, with occasional plates and covered dishes suggestively laid away in it, met her eye; on the floor in front of this last rested a little heap of something wet and glistening. Untidy as it looked, it had an eatable appearance to Caroline, whose instinct in these matters was unimpeachable, and bending over it she inserted one finger.

"Current jelly!" she whispered, thoughtfully licking the inquiring member. "The idea!"

She approached the wire closet and peered along the shelves; there was no jelly there.

"'Dropped it getting it out," she pursued, "I wonder why Selma didn't wipe it up."

Suddenly her face brightened.

"We'll keep right on and pretend 'twas burglars," she announced to the quiet cellar, "and they stole the jelly in a hurry and dropped this and never noticed, and went upstairs to eat it and get the silver! And so I found 'em, after all!"

Still on tiptoe, she left the cellar, stole through the laundry, and crept mysteriously up the back stairs. So absorbed she was that a cracking board stopped her heart for a breath, and a slip on the landing sent her to her knees in terror. The empty quiet seemed to hum around her; strange snappings of the old woodwork dried her throat. With her hand on the swing door that led into the dining-room, she paused in a delicious ecstasy of terror, as the imagined clink of glass and silver, the normal clatter of a cheerful meal, seemed to echo in the air.

It was always difficult for Caroline in such moments of excitement to distinguish between what she saw and heard and what she wished to see and hear, and at this ghost of table music she smiled with pleasure.

"The house is empty," said her common-sense, but she pursed her lips and whispered, "they're up here eating—they've come for the silver!"

By fractions of inches she pushed the door on its well-oiled hinge and slipped noiselessly into the dining-room.

A broad beam of light fell across the dark, wainscoted room, and in the track of it sat a handsome well-dressed man, busily eating. In front of him was a roast chicken, a cut-glass dish of celery and a ruby mound of jelly; a crusty loaf of new bread lay broken at his right; at his left, winking in the sunbeam, stood a decanter half filled with a topaz liquor. He was daintily poising a bit of jelly on some bread, the mouthful was in the air, when his eyes fell on Caroline, an amazed and cobwebbed statue in front of him.

The hand that held the bread grew rigid. As spilled milk spreads over a table, the man's face was flooded with sudden grayish white; against it his thin lips were marked in lavender. While the grandfather clock ticked ten times they stared at each other, and then a wave of deep red poured over his face and his mouth twitched.

"What are you doing here, little girl?" he demanded sternly, pointedly regarding her dusty rumpled figure.

Caroline gulped and dropped her eyes.

"I—I—nothing particular," she murmured guiltily.

The man laid the piece of bread down carefully and wiped his fingers on the napkin spread across his knees.

"Some time," he said, in a leisurely drawl, "you'll burst into a room like that, where a person with a weak heart may be sitting, and that'll be the last of 'em."



"The last of 'em?" Caroline repeated vaguely.

"Just so. They'll die on you," he explained briefly.

Caroline stepped nearer.

"Is—is your heart weak?" she inquired fearfully. "I'm so sorry. So is my Uncle Lindsay's."

"What were you sneaking about so soft for?" he demanded.

She flushed.

"I—I was playing burglars," she confessed, "and I got to where they were in here with the silver, and—and I was coming in to—to get them, and I didn't expect anybody would be here, really, you know, and I was surprised when I saw you. I didn't know about your heart."

"Burglars?" said the man, laughing loudly. "Well, that's one on me! I must say you're a nervy young party. So you thought I was a burglar, did you?"

"Oh, no!" Caroline cried, "of course not—I meant I was playing it was burglars; I didn't mean you. I—I didn't know anybody was here."

"Humph!" said he. "What made you play burglars? Anything in that line yourself, ever?"

Caroline stared uncomprehendingly.

"My mother doesn't think it's right for Aunt Edith to go off and leave the house all alone the way she does," she explained; "she's always telling her some one will break in if she doesn't leave Selma or a dog. And she never locks a thing, you know—she says if they intend to get in, they will, and that's all there is about it. So this time she went for three days, and Miss Honey and the General and Delia; and Selma and Anna went to a wedding and Ed went somewhere about a lawn-mower, and little Ed was going to get the pony shod. I told Aunt Edith I'd—" she coughed importantly—"keep an eye on the house."

"I see," said the man.

He poured himself two inches of the topaz liquor; it rocked in the glass.

Caroline sniffed inquiringly.

"That's the Scotch," she said; "I know by the smell, partly like cologne and partly smoky. Do you like it?"

The man raised the glass to the level of his eyes and watched the light play through it, then made a slight movement of his arm and the whisky disappeared smoothly.

"Your Aunt Edith's taste is as good as her voice," he said, eyeing Caroline carefully.

"Oh, that's not Aunt Edith's—that's Uncle Joe's," she explained. Then, as it flashed across her suddenly.

"Did you want to see him? He's in New York, too. They're going to have pictures taken of Miss Honey and General. But after that, Uncle Joe's going to Chicago. Did you want him?"

"N-no, not exactly," said the man, studying his well-kept finger-nails. "I can't say I do. No, my business is with—is more—"

He stopped suddenly and followed the direction of Caroline's eyes.

There on the sideboard behind him stood a leather suit-case, long and solid looking. It was open and tight rows of forks and spoons filled it.

The room was quite still for a moment. Caroline wanted to show by some intelligent remark that she understood the situation, and could easily imagine what the man was doing with the silver, but she found this difficult.

Strange people came to Aunt Edith's house. Dark, foreign-looking men ate meals there at unusual hours; once Caroline had seen with her own eyes a plump, yellow German fall suddenly on his knees at Aunt Edith's feet, as a hand-organ struck up its brassy music under the window, and burst into passionate singing, waving a whisk-broom in the air and offering it to Aunt Edith with the most extraordinary force of manner. And her aunt, who wore at the time a raincoat and tam o'shanter cap, had leaned forward graciously, gurgled out a most delicious little tune, accepted the whisk-broom, affected to inhale its fragrance rapturously, and whirled into a big and beautiful song in which the plump, yellow gentleman joined, and rising seized her in his arms, at which point they drowned the hand-organ completely, and the hand-organ man and Uncle Joe applauded loudly, and they gave the hand-organ man all he could eat and a dollar.

You may see from this that one did not look for the commonplace in Aunt Edith's house. Moreover, the stranger was not unlike some of her aunt's friends; though he was handsome and assured and noticeably at his ease, Caroline felt that his manner was subtly different from that of the friends of her own family. But even the most unconventional guest had never collected the sideboard silver, and a little feeling was growing in the air ... doubt and a bit of what might have begun to be fear ... when suddenly the man began to laugh. It was abrupt and it rang harshly at first, but grew with every moment warmer and more infectious, so that Caroline, though she felt that she was in some way the cause of it, joined in it finally, in spite of herself.

"If you knew what a sight you were!" he exclaimed, wiping his eyes with the napkin, "with your hair all cobwebs and all that dirt on your knees and those finger-marks on your apron, and being so small and all"—he began to chuckle again.

"Small?" she repeated portentously.

"Oh, I didn't mean small compared with—with anybody else the same size," he assured her quickly.

Catching her mollified glance, he went on more soberly.

"And how did you get in, now? No doors, I'll bet."

"Under the kitchen porch, through the little cellar window and up the back stairs," she explained.

"You mean to say you were out in that little back hall and I never heard you?"

She nodded. "I took pains to be still," she added, "so as to surprise the—so if there had been—"

"I understand," he said gravely, "so as to get them if they had been there. Well, you'd have done it. You're all right. Now, I suppose you're wondering what all this means, aren't you? You haven't got any idea who I am, have you? You don't know one single thing about me, and you may be thinking—"

"I know one thing about you," she interrupted, "I know you went to Yale."

The man's jaw dropped, his hands gripped the arm of the chair.

"And how in—how did you know that?" he cried roughly, with blazing eyes.

Caroline shrank a little but faced him.

"Your pin," she said, pointing to his vest, "I saw it when you held your arm up."

The man sank back in his chair and fingered the little jeweled badge unconsciously.

"Well, of all the cute ones ... so you've seen this before?" he suggested.

"Of course I have—my brother has one, and my Uncle Joe and Uncle Lindsay and Cousin Lindsay and Cousin Joe."

"All went to Yale?" he inquired.

"Lindsay and Joe are there now—they're seniors," she informed him. "The General's going when he grows up. All the Holts go there. Grandfather Holt went."

"You don't say," said the man, bending forward in genuine interest, "I guess it's a pretty good college, eh?"

"The best of them all," she assured him.

"I'll tell you an awful funny thing," she went on abruptly, "you know all the Holts look alike. Well, when Uncle Lindsay first went to Yale, he was walking along the Campus, and right by Old South Middle he met the President. And the President stopped and said, 'Well, well, I see the race of Holts is not yet extinct. Good afternoon, sir!' The President. And he never saw him before!"

The man shook his head thoughtfully.

"You don't say," he repeated. "Old South Middle—that's it. That's the one."

Suddenly he shrugged his shoulders and took out his watch. "This'll never pay the rent!" he said briskly. "Now let's get to business. I suppose you were surprised to see all that stuff in the suit-case?"

Caroline nodded and grinned back at him, his own quick smile was so friendly and compelling.

"Well," he continued, rising and bunching the napkin beside his plate, "I don't blame you. Not a bit. I'd have been the same myself. And you'll be even more surprised when you find out what I'm doing—that is," he stopped abruptly, "unless your Uncle Joe has told you already and sent you over to help?"

She shook her head.

"Didn't, eh?" he stepped over to the sideboard, wiping off the knife and fork he had been using, and packed them with the others. Caroline, watching his hands, noticed in the corner of the case a familiar chamois skin bag; she had often seen it on Aunt Edith's bureau.

"Well, now," he continued, "If I had a niece as sharp and smart and quiet as you are, Missy, I'd tell her my plans, I would, and get her to help me. I wonder your uncle didn't. Sure he didn't mention me—Mr. Barker?"

Again she shook her head, her eyes fastened to the bag.

"Well," said the man, shutting down the cover of the suit-case and strapping it tightly, "it's this way. You may have heard your uncle say something about it being kind o' careless, leaving the house so much alone? Anyhow, whether he's talked to you or not about it, he has to me often enough."

"Oh, yes!" Caroline was conscious of a distinct sense of relief. "I've often heard him. Then you do know Uncle Joe?"

The man faced her, starting in violent surprise.

"Do I know Uncle Joe?" he repeated; "do I know him?" He shook his head feebly and gazed about the room. "She says, do I know Joe Holt! And what should I be doing, eating my lunch here, if I didn't?" he demanded. "What should he tell me about his troubles for, and ask me to help him, if I didn't know him? Is it likely I'd be packing his silver in my suit-case if I didn't know him?"

Caroline stood abashed.

"I should think you might guess by this time what the joke is," he went on forgivingly, seeing that she was quite overcome with her own stupidity, "but as I have to get away pretty quick now, I'll tell you. You see, Joe isn't coming right back with your aunt; he's going on to Chicago, and that may keep him some time away—"

("I know," Caroline interpolated), "and he wanted your aunt to have somebody stay in the house to look after it—he felt worried. But no, she wouldn't. Wouldn't even get a dog—that is," eyeing Caroline steadily, "unless she's got one lately, but when I last heard—"

"No," she assured him, "she wouldn't. Aunt Edith hates dogs."

"So Joe told me. 'Now what would you do, Henry,' says Joe to me, that's my name, Henry Barker, 'what would you do with a woman like that?'

"'Do, Joe?' says I, 'why, I'll tell you what I'd do, I'd teach her a lesson, that's what. I'd I'd give her one good scare, and then you'd find she'd take your advice, after that.'"

At this point the man reached for his overcoat and began to struggle into it.

"'But I don't know how to, Henry,' says he. 'You don't?' says I, 'nothing easier. Just tip somebody off when the house is empty and they'll run up and slip in, take what silver and jewelry they can find in a hurry, pack it up careful and hide it away wherever you say. Then when your wife gets back and finds 'em gone, there'll be the d—— there'll be a row, and when she says it's her fault for not leaving the servants in the house, and she'll never do it again, then you say, 'All right, my dear, I'm glad you've learned your lesson,' and step out and get the bag! How's that?' I said."

He put his hat on, drew a pair of gloves from his pocket, and looked hard at Caroline; her answering glance was troubled and non-committal. He scowled slightly and rested one hand on the bag.

"'All very well, Henry,' says Joe to me, 'but who's to do all this? I don't know anyone that would dare to, let alone be willing,'" he went on, glancing hurriedly around the room. "'You know as well as I do that if they should get caught doing it, anybody would swear 'twas burglary plain and simple, and run' em right in. They'd call the police. It would look bad for whoever did it, you know,' he said."

"He might have asked me. I'd love to do it," Caroline muttered resentfully.

As a matter of fact the scheme was sufficiently like many a practical joke of her irrepressible uncle. Better than anyone, Caroline, his conspirator elect, knew the lengths he was capable of going to confound or scandalize his adjacent relatives.

"Of course," said the man, with relief in his voice, "that's why I asked you if he hadn't. I guess he was afraid you wouldn't dare. I'd have trusted you, though, myself."

She looked gratefully at him.

"Then, I said, 'Why, Joe, if that's the way you feel about it, I'll do it myself,'" he concluded, lifting the suit-case from the sideboard and grimacing at its weight. "'What's the good,' says I, 'of calling yourself a friend, if you can't run a little risk? Just tell me the day to come and where you want 'em put—be sure you pick a good safe place—and I'll 'tend to it for you,' I said, 'and you'll do as much for me some day when I'm in a tight place.'"

He settled his hat firmly and moved to the long window.

"I'll have to hurry if I don't want to lose my train," he explained.

"But where's the place?" Caroline cried excitedly; "what place did Uncle Joe pick out? Won't you tell me? I won't tell—truly, I won't!"

The man paused with one hand on the window button, and looked thoughtfully at her.

"By George," he announced, "I've a good mind to tell you! I'm not supposed to tell a soul, you know, but you've been such a brick, and being his own niece and all, I think you've got a right to know, I really do."

Caroline nodded breathlessly.

"Look here!" he cried, "I'll trust you if your uncle won't. I don't like the place he told me, much—it isn't safe enough. There's two thousand dollars' worth of stuff here, counting the—counting everything, and an old barn's no place for it. See here. You promise me to stay here for an hour—one hour exactly, by the clock—and I'll leave this bag at your house for you. Then you can hide it under your bed, or anywhere you want, till to-morrow, and then you can manage the rest to suit yourself. How's that?"

"Oh, that would be grand!" she gasped.

"You can just tell your uncle that I saw you were game and I trusted you, if he wouldn't," he concluded, opening the window, "and I'll take this to your house in half an hour. Will you promise not to leave for an hour? We mustn't be seen together, you know, or people might suspect and then the game'd be up. And will you lock this window after me and go out the same way you came?"

"Yes, yes! I promise, I promise solemnly!" she assured him, flushed with importance, "and tell 'em not to open it, will you? They might. Say it's private for me, will you?"

"All right," he said soberly. "I'm kind o' sorry they went to Yale," he added abruptly. "I'd rather—sh! what's that?"

He stood rigidly listening; his eyes rolled back, his hand raised in warning.

"I don't hear—" she began, but his angry gesture and the furious whisper that went with it cowed her into a silence as strained as his own.

For a moment it seemed to Caroline that she heard a faint snap as of a board released from pressure, but dead quiet followed; she held her breath with excitement as the man lifted the suit-case over the ledge, and peering over the balcony stepped out. Suddenly he paused, one leg over the sill; his eyes rolled back towards the room, his lips tightened. So terrible, and so despairing his face had turned that Caroline rushed to the window. Even as she started she heard quick soft steps in the hall, and pointed to the freedom outside.

"Jump, oh, jump, Mr. Barker!" she whispered in a glow of terror, "hurry! It is somebody!"

He pointed silently to the ground below, and with her heart pounding heavily she peered over the sill. Directly below them crouched a Great Dane, brindled, enormous, one eye fixed sternly on the window.

The soft steps paused: perhaps she had imagined them! Perhaps, if they kept quite still, that quaking pair, perhaps.... The man breathed like a drowning swimmer; it seemed to Caroline she must scream.

The door flew open.

"Look out, there—it's loaded!" the voice came sharp as a cracked whip.

Caroline gave a shriek of joy.

"Why, it's Lindsay!" she cried, "it's just Cousin Lindsay!"

A tall, powerful young man came in behind a leveled revolver.

"Car—what—be still, there!" he gasped, steadying the weapon. The man stood motionless, his eyes on the ground.

"It's all right—I never carried a gun in my life," he said quietly.

"Oh, Lindsay, it's only a joke!"

Caroline ran towards him, stopping in horror at the ugly winking eyes of the revolver.

"Mr. Barker only meant—tell Lin about it!" she entreated, sick with foreboding at the dogged man before her, the scornful flushed boy at her side.

"I guess you better tell him, Missy," said the man in a low empty voice.

"Go home, Caroline; go straight home this moment."

Caroline had never heard her cousin speak in that tone, and it was partly in tears, partly in wrath that she answered,

"I will not go straight home, Lindsay Holt, and you needn't talk to me that way, either! Uncle Joe himself asked Mr. Barker—"

She began glibly enough, but even to her simple consciousness the story wavered and rang false, with this stricken, passive man before her. Her voice faltered, she choked.... Had Uncle Joe really asked this man to get the emeralds? Was it possible that—Lindsay laughed disagreeably.

"If you've quite finished, Caroline, will you go home?" he demanded, his eyes still on the revolver.

She gulped painfully; her faith tottered on the last brink.

"Oh, let it go at that; can't you?" the man broke in roughly. "What difference does it make to you, eh, how this part of the job gets done? Have I made you any trouble yet? My goose is cooked, all right, and we'll—we'll talk that over, later, when Missy goes, but—but couldn't you"—he looked almost appealingly at the young fellow,—"couldn't we—it's all there in the suit-case—"

"It was going under my bed Lin—I'd have been careful," Caroline was hoping against hope, now.

"You see, Missy," said the man quickly, in almost his old manner, "you see how it turns out. It was a bad plan, I guess—you can see how your cousin takes it. You'll have to—to tell your uncle how it worked; it's one on me, all right."

"Suppose we put it all back and—oh Lord, what's the use?" he ended suddenly.

"Cut it short—what the hell do I care?"

He dropped suddenly into the chair behind him; his head fell over on his arms, and the stiff hat rolled along the floor.

The young man stared curiously at him, but the weakness was genuine; every muscle was relaxed.

Lindsay's face softened a little. "As far as that goes, you're quite right," he said curtly, "though it's a little late in the day. Look here, Caroline. Mr.—Mr. Barker and I don't agree very well on the best way to teach people to lock their houses. I—it seems to me a pretty poor joke. Uncle Joe never meant it to go quite so far, I'm quite sure," he concluded jerkily. "I—I want to do the best thing all round, but," looking anxiously towards her for a second, "this is a little too—a little too—"

Her face cleared at his change of tone. "I know," she returned eagerly, "I know just what you mean, Lindsay. I think so, too. Anybody would think—"

"That's it," he said briefly.

"You say you thought so yourself at first," she added, looking uncomfortably at the bent figure in the chair, "and that made him feel—"

"Well, well, I understand now," Lindsay interrupted irritably, "it's all right now, Caroline. Hadn't you better go? Mr.—Mr. Barker and I will come along later."

"Oh, I'll wait and go with you, Lin," she returned, almost assured, now, "why do I have to go first?"

The man lifted his head; at sight of the young fellow's nervous perplexity he smiled faintly.

"Suppose you run along, Missy," he suggested; "your cousin and I want to talk business, and—and then I must be hurrying on—hurrying on," he repeated vaguely, with dazed eyes. He raised his hand to his head; Lindsay started forward, the revolver loose in his hand.

"Where did you get that pin?" he cried sharply. "Give that to me."

The man fingered the pin thoughtfully. "You're 'way off there," he said. "That's not—that's not—"

"Not one of your 'jokes'?" Lindsay's voice rang disagreeably. "I happen to know the contrary. I'll trouble you to hand it over. I'll soon know to whom it belongs."

Caroline, hanging over the sill, lost in talkative admiration of the Great Dane, was oblivious for the moment of the room behind her.

"It belongs to my son," said the man. There was a moment of silence. Outside the great hound whined softly.

"His name Barker, too?" Lindsay asked coldly, half rising.

"No, sir. His name is James Wardwell," said the man defiantly.

Lindsay sprang to his feet.

"That's a dirty lie!" he shouted. He stood over the man, careless of the revolver. "And you'll pay for it, too!"

Caroline stared aghast at them.

"Look out for the gun," the man warned him, and, as with a flush of mortification Lindsay mastered his weapon, he added quietly, "you can't be too careful with firearms."

Lindsay gritted his teeth.

"You—you—" he began furiously. The man met his eyes for a second, then with a dark, slow blush, dropped his arm.

The boy drew back uncertainly.

"What's the good of lying like that?" he said, "how's it going to help you?"

The man looked at the floor.

"Don't be a fool—how's it going to?" Lindsay repeated irritably.

The other did not move.

"Is that the truth?" Lindsay's voice was strained and worried.

The man drew a long, uneven breath. "Yes," he answered.

Lindsay glanced at the suit-case, at the man in the chair, at the revolver.

"Jimmy!" he muttered, "Jimmy B.!" For the first time since he had last addressed her, he noticed Caroline. He frowned, then suddenly his face cleared.

"Look here," he said, his eye again on the man, "do you know where all that silver belongs?"

She nodded.

"I help Selma sometimes."

"Could you put it back so nobody would know?"

"Oh, yes," she answered him, "and the—things from the bureau, too?"

His lips curled scornfully and his hold on the revolver tightened.

"A thorough job, wasn't it?" he muttered, then controlling himself he answered evenly, "Oh, yes, might as well get 'em all back. We'll just step in the library a minute."

The man got up and went before him into the library, stumbling as he walked.

Lindsay watched him drop into a seat and stood in front of him.

"What proof have you got that what you said in there is true?" he asked abruptly, "before we leave the house, I must know."

"Proof?" the man repeated, "proof?" He stared almost vacantly at Lindsay.

"Why, yes," the boy answered impatiently.

"You say you're the father of one of the most brilliant men in my class, you wear the pin of his society—a pin I happen to know he lost recently—and I find you stealing my aunt's spoons! For God's sake, what's the meaning of it?"

The man twisted his fingers together and moistened his lips.

"It kind of settled on me all at once," he said in a hollow voice, "I felt it since morning. She scared me so to begin with—she came like a ghost—and then the dog finished me. I had one o' them once and he nearly did me up—turned on me. Jim pulled him off," he added, "but they give me a turn whenever I see 'em."

Lindsay stamped angrily.

"Will you prove what you say? Or shall we discuss it at the station-house?"

The man raised his hand deprecatingly. "No, no;" he said hastily, "no—that's what I don't want. That's why I—that's the reason I don't—good Lord, don't you know you've given me a half a dozen chances, if I'd had the nerve for the risk? Why, I c'd've butted that gun out of your hand twice in the last ten minutes, you young fool! How long d'ye suppose it would take a husky man to back you into one closet and Missy into another and walk off with the stuff? Hey?"

His eyes flashed, he threw back his head and breathed hard, a cornered animal. Lindsay felt a tingle of excitement run down his spine; for a moment there was danger in the air.

"I—I notice you didn't see your way to all this," he said scornfully. But he blushed as he spoke, the man saw it, and Lindsay knew he saw it; he winced and drew himself up in a boyish attempt to save the situation.

"It's quite true—I'm not in the habit of catching house thieves," he said, drawling a little, "and I doubt if many of them are quite such accomplished liars as you appear to be; but my stroke will improve, I've no doubt, as we go on. Would you mind getting up and 'coming along with me' as they call it, I believe?"

The man made no answer, but raised his hands high above his head.

"If you'll look in that left vest pocket, there's a little leather case there," he said, "and—and you'd better take the pin, too, I guess. I'd be obliged if you'd say you found it somewhere; I never should've put it on."

Somewhat clumsily Lindsay extricated the leather case, cursing his awkwardness and the patience of the man.

A worn little photograph of a boy of eight or nine was in his hand; across the bottom was scrawled in a childish hand, "Daddy, from your son James."

He drew a long breath.

"That's Jimmy, all right," he said dully.

"If you'll just tear it up," said the man. "It's all I've got, and nobody'd know but some friend that—that would be lookin' for the likeness."

Lindsay threw the picture on the floor.

"I won't believe it—its too sickening!" he cried, "Jim Wardwell's a gentleman! I—I—why I admired him more than—good God, he's a friend of mine!"

The man smiled faintly.

"Oh, Jimmy has fine friends," he said almost complacently, "he's always gone with the best. He's very particular."

Lindsay's forehead was a network of pain and doubt.

"But Jimmy has plenty of money," he insisted, "he always had the—his things—oh, it's idiotic! You're crazy, that's all."

"Oh, yes, he always had plenty," the man said simply.

In the pause that followed they heard the soft chink of silver through the wall; Caroline was evidently busy.

Lindsay twisted his face into an ugly smile.

"And I thought he was the squarest of the lot," he said slowly, "I've said so often. We all did. Pretty easy, weren't we?"

"He is!" The man half rose, but fell back with a grunt of pain.

"Oh, damn this heart!" he complained fretfully. "I don't know what's the matter with me. That fortune woman, she knew. Last week it was I went. 'You're making a plan to end up your business,' she says to me, 'and so you will, mister, but not the way you think. There's some trouble coming to you and a child's mixed up in it. Look out for strange dogs,' she says, they all tell me that—'and run no risks this month. I don't just like the looks of your hand,' she says. And when I saw that child, it was all up with me, I thought. I didn't think the machine would ever get started again. And then that infernal dog...."

"We were speaking of—of—did you say that Jim—" Lindsay's voice sounded strange, even to himself.

The man blinked a moment.

"What?" he said vaguely, "what about Jim? Oh—he don't know anything about it, of course. I sh'd think you'd know enough for that. That's what I'm telling you, if you'd keep still a minute."

He stared thoughtfully at the floor and Lindsay waited. Caroline ran up the front stairs, and he had counted each step before the man went on.

"So I sent the money regular every quarter," he muttered, as if continuing some tale, "and I'd go to see him sometimes all dressed up, and I tried to talk like he did. He thought I was traveling and didn't want to be bothered. But I couldn't see him much—was I going to drag him down, just as I'd got him started right? Not much. 'Go and visit your friends, o' course,' I used to tell him, 'and you can write to me.' The best schools I picked out, the very best. And they came high. But I was good for it."

He shifted in his chair and rubbed his eyes.

"I had a hunch when I bought the ticket," he muttered. "It just come over me—'you ought not to go to a place you got the idea of from Jim,' something seemed to say to me, 'it's unlucky.' And everything so still, and the stuff so easy—'twas like finding it in the road. And the last time, too—the last time."

"But Jim—he thought—" Lindsay prompted. A dreadful curiosity held him.

"So then he wrote, 'of course it's Yale, dad,' he wrote, 'we're all going up together. You don't mind if it costs a little to get settled, do you?' And was I going to go to him—he was head of his class, mind you—and say, the Trust has treated me the way I wouldn't treat a dog—it's all up with me and you? I can go back and be foreman again at the works—we're bought up, chewed up and spit out like a wad o' paper?' Not much, I guess. No. Here's where I quit the honesty game, I said, for it don't pay. You stole my patent, and I shut up because I couldn't afford to fight you, and you raised me and raised me—and let me into the firm when you knew it was going to bust! Now, I says, since my boy's education has been stole from me, I'll steal it back, I says, and only from them that can afford it, too! And I'll use no lawyer to do it, either, and we'll have no trick-work with papers. I'll get it straight from the wives and daughters of the big thieves that pass the plate on Sundays."

Lindsay listened to Caroline moving over their heads; her steps seemed the only reality in this horrid dream.

"It—it will just about kill Jim," he said slowly.

"It would have killed him not to go to college," the man returned sharply, "and he had a right to go."

"But, good heavens, there are ways—he could have earned money—he's clever enough to work his way through a dozen colleges!" Lindsay cried despairingly.

"There wasn't any working his way through for my boy," said the man, with a cunning grin; "I've done enough o' that for the family, thank you. So did his mother—she died of it. No, there's money enough for all, and it only needs a little planning. The thing is, never take a risk. Wait for a sure thing. Take from the kind that takes from your kind—they'll never miss it. Work alone, and never try to get too much. Who are the ones that get caught? The 'pals'! No, I've just done for myself, and contented to sell at a big loss, and only wanted to get my twenty-five hundred a year for Jim, and something over for his vacations—those camps cost a lot—and enough to dress as I may need to."

Lindsay cleared his throat.

"Do you mean to say that Jim never asked you what your business was?"

"He didn't know I ever changed till last month. He thought I traveled for the Comp'ny. Of course he didn't like that any too well—you know, you wouldn't expect him to, brought up as he's been—and I guess he thought 'twould be kinder to me not to mention it much. He thought I didn't know, but I did. Last month—last month—" the man paused and his mouth worked, though he bit his lips.

"Well, last month?" Lindsay repeated pitilessly.

"I got my hunch to quit. That fortune woman and—and other things. The doctor told me to keep quiet and not get on my nerve. And I sort of fixed it up with Jim in a letter. I told him I'd sold out my interest in the firm and I was going to send him one more thousand for graduatin' with and I was going to let him try for himself after that. I knew that was all right, because he's told me of plenty of rich young swells who had to. Fathers believed in it."

"He was going with Buck Williamson on the ranch," said Lindsay slowly.

"That's it! Buck Williamson. He asked me wouldn't I look 'em up after they got settled and try it out there. It was an awful nice letter," said the man softly, "he's a real gentleman."

Lindsay jerked his head toward the dining-room.

"Was this the 'thousand'?" he asked coldly.

The man nodded.

"I've never been with him more than a day or two, you see, and I thought I'd go up to New Haven this spring—when he graduated, and see him. Just a day or two. And then I was planning to drop out. Of course I never meant to see him much. I was always deadly afraid something'd happen, and I didn't want to get connected up with Jim. But I've been careful. There's not a line o' writing anywhere, and the man that sold the stuff for me in Jersey City is close as wax."

"But your friends—" Lindsay was wrung with an angry pity.

"I don't care for much of anybody but Jim," said the man.

Caroline was moving restlessly about in the dining-room again. Lindsay shook himself nervously.

"Of course, this is very awkward for me," he began, "I mean—I—oh, the devil! You know what I've got to do, of course?"

The man looked appealingly at him. "You've got it all back," he said quickly, "and you know Jim—"

"Yes, plague take it—I know Jim," the boy muttered, "we all know Jim."

"Known well, isn't he?" the man inquired eagerly, "there's no cleverer scholar there, much cleverer, I mean, is there?"

Lindsay shook his head. "Not that amounts to anything," he said shortly.

"I'll bet there's no better fellow there than Jim—none of the big bugs?"

"There is no better fellow anywhere," said Lindsay.

Caroline tapped fretfully on the door. "Aren't we ever going, Lin?" she begged; "it's all put back."

"Yes, yes, in a minute!" he answered, and turned to the man. "I'm damned sorry to have to do it," he began, "it's a horrible thing to do, but I can't see that there are any two ways about it. I don't want to hear you say any more. If you'll come quietly, well and good. If it was anybody else—but in my uncle's house—and the community—and—well, will you come?"

The man sighed. He looked ten years older. "All right," he said, "I didn't know but—well, never mind. My nerve's gone. I never had a failure, you see. An' I always knew I couldn't stand one. Never even left a trail. I couldn't afford to, workin' as I did. I always knew 'twas bound to come, though, and here it is. But it's hard. Jim was telling me last month about this singer that he'd heard was so careless, and I noted it down for use some day. You have to notice those things. He never said his friends lived here. I—it makes me feel dreadful when I think how he'd feel if he knew I'd been working his friends this way—he'd never stand for that, Jim wouldn't. It makes me feel—oh, well, what's the odds? But I wish you didn't belong to Yale College."

Lindsay scowled and motioned to the door.

"Shut up and come on, will you?" he blurted.

The man got up.

"I guess I won't see Jim again, then," he said, "will I? Of course there isn't one chance in a hundred he'll ever know. But I couldn't explain why I didn't go up to New Haven, nor send the thousand, and it'll be five years, anyhow—ten, maybe. And I shan't hold out that. The doctor only gave me two."

"Ten years? Oh, no!" Lindsay cried.

"It's grand larceny," said the man simply.

"Lin, Lin, come on!" called Caroline.

"You've got the pin, and I'll tear the picture up," said the man. "I've got it all planned, o' course—I give the name of Barker. And—and if Jim ever says anything to you or any of his friends about me being mean about the thousand, when I'd promised it, just kind of give a hint, will you, that things may have happened so's I couldn't? I hope he'll think I died. I wish he was through Yale, though. The thousand won't make any difference with graduatin', will it?"

Lindsay swallowed hard; his nerves were strained to snapping.

"Good God, no!" he shouted. He stepped to the French window, opened it, and threw the revolver over the sill.

"Get out!" he said briefly, turning to the man, "get out of my sight! If Jim ever receives another penny from you, I'll tell him all I know."

The man swayed towards the chair. "Do you mean it?" he gasped, "honest?"

He began to sob and choke a little, and turning half bent over the chair, hunted with his hand for his hat.

"Get out!" Lindsay repeated violently, looking persistently sidewise.

The man leaned over and fumbled for the picture on the floor, found it and straightened himself.

Suddenly he leaped back and fell into the chair again; a dreadful pallor reached the roots of his hair.

"All up, I guess—twice to-day—'Jim good-by," he said very quickly, and rolled against Lindsay, the picture tight in his hand.

"Lin! If you don't come pretty soon"—Caroline pushed open the door a little.

"Hush! Run and bring that whisky!" her cousin whispered, his face drawn and frightened.

She waited outside while he labored mysteriously, breathing hard.

"Is Mr. Barker sick, Lin?" she whispered fearfully when he came back to the door.

"Y—yes. I guess he's pretty sick," he said slowly, stepping out with her and turning the knob carefully. The dining-room reeked with the whisky on his hands and his coat.

"We'll go for the doctor," he went on, "both of us, because we'll have to fix—I'll have to talk to you on the way. You needn't hurry so, Caroline. There's no—we don't have to hurry." He tried the outside door twice, to make sure it was latched, and glanced hastily at the library windows.

"I'd better wire Uncle Joe," he said half to himself; "he'll know what to do—oh, there's the dog. Come on, Hamlet—he's Buck Williams's—gentle as a kitten."

"Yes, he'll know," she repeated, contentedly, reaching for Hamlet's black muzzle.

"But I don't think that was right, do you, Lin, even for a joke?" she queried, following him down the side path. The big hound padded on behind them.

"No," he agreed briefly.

"Wasn't it funny he had one of your pins?" She was trotting rapidly, to keep up with him.

Lindsay stopped short and almost faced her. He looked very young and tired.

"I swear, Caroline, I believe worse men have worn it!" he said.



V

A PILLAR OF SOCIETY

Caroline slipped out of the woodshed with Henry D. Thoreau barking under his breath at her heels, and struck across the dusty mountain road into the trail. The advantages of the woodshed were many: it was cool and dark, the stacked wood had a soothing odor and a neat, restful appearance, and one was more or less forgotten there. More important, it lay directly under the long living-room, and sounds carried easily through the primitive plank floor. Up to now the murmur of the company's voices had been a negligible quantity, a background for thought, merely, but suddenly a familiar intonation had risen higher.

"Why, certainly, Caroline can show you—she knows all the trails. Yes, indeed, she'd be delighted, I'm sure.... Oh, any time you prefer. Don't let her dawdle along, though; she's such a strange child—sometimes it will take her ten minutes to get across the road, and then another time she will be as quick as a flash. I'll see where she is."

But even as the boards squeaked above her head, Caroline had fled, and Henry D. Thoreau, smarting from the indignity of her brown, berry-stained hand circling his muzzle, was expressing his feelings to the yellow birches and ground pine.

"Oh shut up, won't you, Henry D.?" she urged him indignantly, "do you want to take that fat old tiresome lady around our nice mountain? I don't b'lieve you do. You can be called 'girlie' if you want to—I don't. She is so hot and she creaks so when she walks! I had to hold your nose."

Henry D., who had only wanted an explanation, subsided, and they trudged on in silence, Indian file, along the narrow trail.

The early afternoon sun filtered down through the birch and beech leaves on Caroline's brown head and Henry D.'s brindled back, pine needles crunched under their feet, thick glossy moss twinkled with last night's rain. They sniffed the damp, wholesome mold delightedly; from time to time Caroline kicked the rotten stump of some pithy, crumbling trunk or marked patterns with her finger nail in the thin new moss of some smooth slab. Indian pipes and glowing juniper berries embroidered the way; pale, late anemones, deceived by the cold mountain weather, sprang up between the giant mushrooms. It was as still as eternity.

The wood grew steadily thicker, the light pierced down in golden arrows only, the silence was almost oppressive. Caroline stepped suddenly out of the tiny path, pushed aside a clump of fern, buried her arm up to the elbow in a hollow stump and produced a large crumbling molasses cooky.

"Just where I left it, Henry D., just exactly!" she whispered delightedly. "I wish now I'd left 'em both, but I didn't feel able to spare 'em at the time."

They ate the cooky pleasantly, Henry D. receiving every third bite with scrupulous accuracy.

"I used to think maybe that huckleberry-boy followed us up and discovered our places, but this proves he don't," she announced, as the last crumb disappeared; "he's not so smart as he thinks he is, is he, Henry D.?"

They trotted on, moving more quickly as the faint, regular crash of an axe on wood came nearer and nearer. A barbed-wire fence had sprung up unaccountably in the wood, following a devious course among the thick trees, and as they scrambled carefully under it, Henry D. pausing with accustomed gallantry while his mistress disentangled two petticoats and an unfortunate stocking, a little gray-shingled cottage jumped out suddenly from the gray beeches, and they emerged into its front yard.

It was a ridiculously operatic little cottage, composed chiefly of bulging balconies, scarlet and yellow with geraniums and nasturtiums, casement windows with tiny leaded panes, and double Dutch doors, evidently practicable. It had all the air of having retired from the other scenery to practice for its own act, and it seemed highly probable that a chorus of happy short-skirted peasantry would skip out from behind it and tunefully relate the fortunes of the heroine within.

But the only person in sight was obviously impossible of such classification. Though she was chopping wood, and chopping it very well, though she wore what is sometimes called a Mother Hubbard wrapper and a stiff, clean blue-checked apron, she was not in the least a peasant. Her figure was tall and spare, her hair gray and drawn into an uncompromising knot, her face wrinkled and shrewd, her eyes soft, and full of the experience that middle-age brings to the native American woman who has lived all her life in the sparsely-settled country districts.

Her face relaxed at sight of her visitors. "How d'ye do?" she called cheerfully, "ma want anything?"

"I don't believe so," Caroline returned sociably, "I've just come up, that's all."

"I thought maybe your ma was worried about them shirt-waists, but she needn't be: I'll have 'em back by Friday, sure. It'll be all I can do, though—he's on the rampage these days, and I've got my hands full, I tell you."

"Is Old Grumpy bad to-day?" Caroline inquired.

"Bad? Child, that old fellow is just about the worst I ever saw, and I've seen plenty. What's on his mind the Lord knows, but it's a lesson to us all to keep our tempers and not have secret thoughts preying on us night and day! Just now he told me the truth for once. 'I'm so worried I can't digest, Luella,' he says to me, 'and I digest so damnably that it's enough to worry an archangel!' There—I shouldn't 'a' said that before you, but—"

"Oh, I know 'damn,' Luella," Caroline assured her, "and it isn't as if you said it purposely, anyway; you just repeated it. It makes all the difference."

"I guess it does," Luella assented, "s'long's you understand it. But then, you understand everything, more or less, 'seems to me. Where you picked it all up at your age—"

"What's that, Luella? Who is talking out there? What's going on now behind my back?"

A petulant and gray-haired gentleman rushed out at them, very much like a wiry Scotch terrier, and glared fiercely at Caroline and Henry D. Thoreau.

"Nothin's goin' on behind your back that I know of, Mr. Wortley," Luella returned composedly. "This little girl comes up to see me every once 'n a while—I do washing for her mother at one of the cottages—and we were just talkin' back and forth, that's all."

"You fried that liver!" the gentleman burst forth abruptly, "you know you fried it, Luella! I might as well have eaten a shingle off the cottage—it's killing me! Ugh! As if I hadn't enough to bear without being murdered with fried liver!"

"I do' know what you've got to bear, Mr. Wortley," and Luella gathered her apron full of kindlings, "but you needn't add fried liver to it, 'cause it was broiled."

"Never!" exploded the fiery gentleman.

"I'd ought to know," said Luella firmly, "I had the grid-iron to wash."

"As for children," he veered off again, "you couldn't have poorer company. Think what they'll grow into—think!"

"Some don't turn out so bad," she reminded him, starting toward the house.

"Ah, but when are you going to decide that they have 'turned out'?" he demanded, trotting angrily beside her, "tell me that, will you? Perhaps you imagine that when they're of age, legally men and women, and you've managed to keep 'em out of the State Reform School up to then, you're justified in thinking they've 'turned out'? Hey?"

"Oh, now, I wouldn't go on so about the State Reform School, Mr. Wortley," Luella urged pacifically, "that's awful. I always say the young ones mean well, mostly; there ain't many that set out to be bad a-purpose. Only, accordin' to their judgment—"

"Their judgment! Their judgment! For God's sake!" he thundered, and darted into the house, slamming the door so that the casements rattled.

"I guess you'd better run on, dear," Luella suggested, "he's bad to-day. Some days I just have my hands full with him, and then again he'll be real pleasant and amusin'—he'll say the cutest things. But he's perturbed to-day, and that's a fact. You stop in 'long in the afternoon, when he takes his nap and I'm at my ironing, and we'll have a good visit."

Caroline nodded soberly and took up her journey again, not a little depressed; he had been such a whirlwind of a gentleman.

Unconsciously she followed a tiny, all-but-overgrown trail that led straight up the hill against which the cottage was built and lost itself, apparently, in the thick wood at the top. A belt of tall beeches half way up blotted out everything behind it, and the dozens of chipmunks and red squirrels that scurried hither and yon, the fat hen-partridge schooling her brood under Caroline's very nose, the flame-colored, translucent lizards slipping under mossy roots at her feet, showed the neglect into which the trail had fallen. She pushed on, hardly certain now that she had not lost it, or that it had ever led anywhere, when she stumbled suddenly over a handsome meerschaum pipe, still warm, and colored to a nicety. She picked it up, poked experimentally at the ashes with a twig, smelled it distastefully and stared about her. No one was in sight, and she had walked at least a quarter of a mile before she encountered a young man sitting in a dejected attitude on the stump of a yellow birch.

He was peering gloomily into the hemlocks opposite him, his hands were deep in his pockets, his feet crossed at an uncomfortable angle. He was a pale young man with dark circles under darker eyes, and an expression of such settled melancholy that Caroline lost no time in assuaging it as far as she could.

"Here it is," she remarked, holding out the pipe, "how do you do?"

The young man started violently.

"Holy Bridget, who are you?" he demanded. "How did you get here? This is private property—didn't you see the sign?"

"There wasn't any sign the way we came," she returned placidly, "we came over the mountain. Don't you want your pipe?"

The young man blushed and scowled. "Thank you very much," he said, extending a thin, brown hand, "I'm afraid I was rather rude. Where did you find it?"

"Oh, down there," she answered vaguely.

He handled the pipe lovingly, knocked it against the birch stump and cleared it further with a curl of the polished, champagne-tinted bark.

"Nice dog," he suggested, "what's his name?"

"Henry D. Thoreau," she replied, studying the green scarab in his necktie and the heavy seal-ring on his left hand.

"For heaven's sake! Who named him?"

"My Uncle Joe," she returned simply, "because he takes to the woods whenever he gets the chance. Was that pin a bug once?"

"Not since I ran across it," said the young man, "before that, I can't say. Has your uncle any other animals?"

"Oh, yes," she assured him. "There's the donkey, his name is Rose-Marie; and the baby's cat, his name is Pharaoh Meneptah, but the baby calls him Coo-coo; and there's Miss Honey's rabbits, they're all named Eleanor, because you can't tell them apart, and one name does just as well; and the canary, his name is Jean and Edouard de Reszke."

The young man burst into laughter and fell off the stump abruptly.

"Those are fine names, all of them," he declared, picking himself up with great solicitude for the pipe, "but why did the canary get two?"

"Because Aunt Edith likes Jean the best, but Uncle Joe says there's more to Edouard," she explained, "so they named him both, because Uncle Joe said anything was better than a divided family."

"That's right," said the young man, "anything is."

His face, which had looked for a moment merry and boyish, darkened again, and his big eyes glowered intently at the shadowy hemlocks.

"Anything," he added, in a low voice, "but a sacrifice of principle, a sacrifice of truth, as it actually is, to the petty conventions of a rotten society!"

With that he sat his teeth hard and pulling a leather pouch out of his pocket, began stuffing the pipe decisively. Caroline waited for him to continue, but as he lit the pipe and puffed at it in silence, she concluded that the interview was at an end, and started up the path.

"You'd better not—" he began, but stopped suddenly and appeared to reconsider. "Oh, I don't know," he added, "it might be better, after all. Go along."

The trail was little more than a worn line in the grass, now; soon it turned sharply to the left, skirted the wood, and led to a tiny, dilapidated cottage. Caroline had more than once passed it by under the impression that it was abandoned, or used perhaps for storing ice or wood; but to-day a thin curl of smoke stained the blue above it and through the open door of the one living-room that formed its ground-floor she saw a scarlet Navajo blanket, on which reposed a magnificent snowy Angora cat. A great green bough covered one of the walls, and a few chairs, a square pine table and a guitar flung against a pile of bright cushions, completed the furniture. At the further end of the room, stretched upon the mate to the Angora's blanket, lay a young woman, sobbing violently.

Caroline hesitated, but Henry D. Thoreau recognized grief, and knew perfectly well what to do. Stepping quietly over to the prostrate figure he encircled it once, looking for a point of vantage, then selecting two little white, pink-tipped fingers, he licked them caressingly.

The sobbing ceased: the girl drew a longer shaking breath.

"Is that you, Mimi?" she said huskily, "I didn't know you cared as much as—oh, what is that?"

Her hand had fallen on the little bull-dog's smooth, stiff coat and she started up in surprise. Caroline smiled shyly into her big, stained gray eyes.

"It's all right—Henry D. never bites—do you feel bad?" she asked.

The girl pushed back a handful of crinkly, chestnut hair from her damp face and rose, shaking out her skirts.

"Y—yes," she said, frankly, "yes, I do. Do you know why?"

"No. Why?" Caroline inquired.

"Because I can't make huckleberry bread," the girl assured her solemnly. "I—I've been trying all the morning. Look in there."

Caroline peered into the little lean-to, filled to over-flowing with a stove, some tin cooking pans, a table full of soiled dishes and a case of kitchen sundries, half unpacked.

"You did get it all over, didn't you?" she observed cheerfully, noting the prints of doughy fingers on oven and chairs and the burned, odorous wreck, resting in soggy isolation in the middle of the floor. "You cooked it a little too much, maybe."

"Maybe," the girl assented listlessly. "I was going to have it for luncheon. The woman promised to be here by ten o'clock, and I got the breakfast well enough—after a fashion—but she hasn't come, and I'm s-so hungry!"

Her eyes filled again. "It's simply filthy here," she murmured. "Do you know anybody we could depend on—oh, how stupid of me, of course you don't."

"There's Luella," Caroline suggested, "she's right near here, and she makes lovely huckleberry bread. Shall I go get her? Old Gr'—the gentleman that she keeps house for takes his nap now, and I know she could come."

The look of relief on the girl's face was enough, and Caroline hurried out, leaving Henry D. Thoreau, who seemed to feel responsible for his hostess's peace of mind, snuggled in her lap.

She burst into Luella's placid afternoon kitchen, big with her news, bustling about excitedly, while Luella methodically packed a market-basket with half a cold chicken, an untouched loaf of huckleberry bread, a pan of tiny biscuits and a glass of currant jelly.

"Butter I know they've got, and milk, for I see Wilkins stop up there this mornin' as I come down, and I wondered who on earth had taken that God-forsaken little cottage. 'Twasn't occupied last season. Cryin' right out loud, was she? She must 'a been all tired out to make such a fuss over a tin o' huckleberry bread. I s'pose she hasn't got many breakfasts in her life. Ten to one 'twas Myra Tenny that disappointed her: it sounds like her. Always undertakin' more 'n any one woman c'd possibly attend to, and then goin' back on you. Pretty cross himself, was he? Well, they'd had words, most likely. They take it hard at first. They ain't long married, of course, if they're young as you say. Poor things. There, I guess that's about all."

Luella closed the kitchen door softly and they hurried along the trail.

"He's off as sound as a baby," she confided to Caroline, "sometimes he'll sleep two hours, he's up so much in the night."

As the relief expedition neared the cottage, Henry D. Thoreau bounded out to greet them, the girl behind him, still flushed and swollen-eyed, but with her thick, reddish hair newly braided in a crown around her head.

"Good afternoon," Luella called cheerily, "I hear you're in trouble up here! You ought to let me known—I'm the one for jobs like this. Just let me into the kitchen, Miss——" She paused, but as the girl made no attempt to help her, continued easily, "well, I should say so! Got a little burnt, didn't it? Never mind, you ought to a' seen my first corn-meal muffins! Now you just step out and rest a minute, dear, and by the time you've called your husband I'll have a little lunch scratched up and you'll feel so different you won't know yourself. It's surprisin' how distressed you c'n get on an empty stomach. 'Tis your husband, isn't it, or is it your brother?"

"No, it's not—yes. It—it's not my brother," the girl said in a low voice.

"No," Luella repeated soothingly, "no, I see. That's a fine cat, ain't it? I've read of 'em—Angora, ain't it?—but I never saw one. They say they're mostly deaf. Is that one?"

"Yes. No—I don't know. I don't believe she is," the girl murmured, brokenly. She seemed newly distressed; her lips, very red against her white cheeks, quivered, her full breast strained against her white linen blouse.

Luella strode lightly about the disorderly little kitchen; she had forgotten the very presence of the girl, it seemed, for as she gathered the soiled dishes, coaxed the fire, filled the kettle and hastily removed the traces of the ill-fated huckleberry bread, she hummed a tune and appeared to see only her work.

Caroline was on her knees before the Angora and knew nothing of the flight of time, though it was really hardly more than a quarter of an hour before the kitchen rivalled Luella's in neatness and the pine table in the living-room, covered with a fresh cloth, and shiny plated silver, only waited its host.

"Now if you'll step out and call your husband, Miss—I didn't just get the name?" said Luella invitingly.

The girl rose from the chair where she had been sitting, motionless, except for her eyes, which had followed every movement of the older woman. She stood very straight and threw her head back with a gesture almost defiant.

"My name is Dorothy Hartley," she declared, and ran abruptly out of the cottage.

"Well, well," Luella shook her head whimsically, "she's pretty well wrought up, isn't she? Sweet little thing, too—real loveable, I sh'd say. It don't seem possible he'd be mean to her. But o' course he wants his breakfast fit to eat, just the same. I put a place for you, Car'line, 'cause I know you c'n eat, no matter what time 'tis—you're 's empty's a bag. There he comes—my, but he's haughty! He looks like somebody in one o' those novels, don't he, now?"

They came slowly up the path, hand in hand, like children, her gray eyes on the ground, his black ones challenging the world. The clear mountain air carried his words easily to the two in the door:

"Now, dearest, be brave! Remember, we are right, and we know we are right."

She clutched his hand nervously, but made no reply.

"Come right in," Luella urged them hospitably, "you must be 'most starved."

"Oh, no," he assured her, with a loyal glance at the girl, "I—I had a good breakfast, didn't I, dear?"

But his eyes brightened at sight of the half chicken and the omelet, glowing in a parsley wreath, and he had broken one of the puffy rolls and plunged into a great cup of coffee before he addressed Caroline.

"You seem to be a valuable person to know," he observed, "you and Matthew Arnold or John Greenleaf Whittier or what-ever-his-name-is."

Caroline looked embarrassed and helped herself to jelly.

"You have helped my—we are very much obliged to you, I am sure," he turned to address Luella, who was passing from stove to table, "aren't we, dearest?"

The girl sat with her hands in her lap, staring at her plate.

"Yes, of course," she agreed, "certainly."

"If you could come every day—they told me I could find some one to do that—it would be a great accommodation," he went on, with a worried look at the sad face opposite him, "and anything it might be worth, I am sure, Mrs.——"

"Judd, Luella Judd," she supplied, briskly. "Now, dear, try to eat a little, do! That omelet'll do you good. And that's a lovely piece o' breast I cut you off. It was all right my bringin' it, for the old gentleman never touches cold meat and the jelly's my own. There, that's right. I thought you'd like it, once you began. There's no need to tempt Car'line and your husband, is there? But that's all right: young folks ought to eat—I never grudged mine a crumb, and the Lord knows they eat me out of house and home."

The young man, indeed, ate voraciously, and under Luella's kindly domineering the hostess herself cleared her plate. The hot coffee brought the color to her cheeks, and she had even smiled at Henry D. Thoreau. Caroline had never seen anyone prettier. She had a great dimple in either cheek, and her gray eyes smiled with the sweetest confidence into the black eyes opposite: any one could see that they loved each other very much, even if they had "had words."

"Just a little more o' the huckleberry bread, dear?" Luella urged her. "I've been sort o' plannin' out how I c'd manage to get here every day, and I guess I can, if you'll be content to wait a little for your breakfast. My old gentleman don't have anything but a cup o' coffee in the morning, an' I c'd be over here by ha' past eight, easy enough, Mr. Hartley, if that suited you—"

"Wortley, my name is Wortley," the young man interrupted, hastily.

Luella looked puzzled.

"Wortley?" she repeated, "why, that's—well, never mind, it's none o' my business. I cert'nly thought she said Hartley, though. Well, if you'n Mrs. Wortley can wait till ha' past eight—"

"Frank, dear," the girl broke in appealingly, but the young man shook his head.

"No, darling," he said firmly, and then looking straight at Luella, he went on: "This lady's name is Hartley. We are not—we are not related."

Luella stared blankly at him a moment, then turned to the girl. But she, though she got up from her seat and going over to the young man seized his hand and pressed it between her own, did not lift her eyes to the woman's troubled and accusing gaze.

Luella drew a long breath, took off her checked apron and rolled it mechanically into a bundle. Her face had hardened; only the shrewdness was left in her eyes.

"You might 'a told me so before," she said briefly, and turned on her heel.

The girl was crying on his shoulder. "Tell her, Frank, please tell her why," she begged, through her sobs.

Luella faced her sternly. "He needn't trouble to tell me why," she said, "I know more'n you think, maybe. I know who your father is, Mr. Wortley, an' I guess I understand pretty well by now what his troubles are. If he forbade you marryin' each other, he had his reasons, I don't doubt, for he's a good man, if he is quick-tempered, an'—"

"He didn't forbid our marrying," the young man broke in sharply, glaring with ill-suppressed irritation at Luella, while he softly patted the girl's shoulder. "He begged us on his bended knees to marry, though I don't know how you know him."

Luella paused with her hand on the door.

"What!" she exclaimed sharply. "Then it was your folks?" She looked at the girl.

"No, it wasn't!" Dorothy lifted her head. "They b-begged us on their b-bended knees, too," she sobbed and disappeared again.

"For the Lord's sake!" Luella muttered. Then turning fiercely on him she took a step forward.

"Do you mean to tell me you're scoundrel enough—" she began, but the young man—he was really only a boy—shook his head angrily.

"Not at all, not at all," he burst out with a curious likeness to his father, "I'm no more a scoundrel than you are, Mrs. Judd, and you'll oblige me by acting accordingly."

It was so evident that he meant what he said, he appeared so righteously indignant, that Luella paused, dumbfounded, twisting the apron in her hands.

"Wh-why ain't you married, then?" she demanded.

The young man surveyed her calmly. "Because I—we disapprove of marriage," he said.

Luella turned a brick-red; her mouth opened vaguely. Though she spoke not a word, he answered her amazed face.

"The conditions of marriage at the present day," he stated loftily, "are not such as to lead me—to lead us to suppose that as an institution it has accomplished its purpose. Where it is not merely legalized—"

"Oh, Frank!" the girl moaned softly, putting her little hand over his opened lips. He kissed it gently, but removed it.

"To say nothing of the absolute misery you can see all about you as a result of a chain that ought long ago to have been broken, or better still, never—"

"And before that child, too!" Luella burst out. "Caroline, you get right up and come home. I never heard anything like it in my life. Come this minute, now!"

Caroline rose unwillingly; she thought Luella unnecessarily severe.

"As to that," young Mr. Wortley announced composedly, "we differ again. The sooner these matters are discussed frankly before children, the sooner we shall have fewer unhappy men and women. There is nothing whatever in my intentions or Miss—or Dorothy's, to shock or affront the youngest child. I have no children myself, but—"

"Humph!" Luella sniffed furiously, "I sh'd hope not!"

"—but if I had," he pursued evenly, "I should teach them precisely—"

"Look here," Luella interrupted roughly, "look me in the face, both of you!"

They turned their eyes full on her, the boy's dilated to fanaticism, glowing with obstinacy; the girl's, wet and pleading, miserable, but full of love. Luella, with narrowed lids, bored into those clear young eyes: no shadow of deceit, no hint of shuffling or double-dealing could withstand that relentless scrutiny.

Slowly her face softened, her eyebrows relaxed, her hold on the twisted apron loosened.

"I guess we better talk this over," she said decisively, closing the door and seating herself squarely in the chair nearest it. "How old did you say you was, Mr. Wortley?"

The forensic expression faded helplessly from the boy's face. He clutched at it, but it failed him, and with the air of a pupil addressing his teacher, he replied: "I didn't say, but I'm twenty-one."

Luella nodded. "An' you can't be a day over nineteen, can you?" she demanded of the girl. The braided chestnut head shook sadly.

"I thought not. I s'pose you've found out that your views ain't shared by most o' the world," she proceeded, with a fine air of impartiality.

"I—we have been very much misunderstood," said the boy stiffly, "but I have never been in the habit of allowing other people's ideas to affect my actions."

"You been spoiled, you mean," Luella interpolated, "I thought so. Spoiled to death, prob'ly."

He bit his lip. "But I hope I—we are prepared for anything—anything," he repeated with emphasis, "that may result from the course we have taken. I expect the results will be unpleasant—I expect it fully."

"I guess your expectations 'll be fulfilled right enough," she responded promptly. "And as for bein' prepared—you remind me o' my father, Mr. Wortley. He used to say he'd been prepared for death since the age o' seven years, but he did hope the Lord wouldn't take advantage of it. Is—is she prepared, too?"

He looked lovingly at the girl who crouched on the floor beside him. "Dorothy and I think precisely the same in everything," he said proudly, "don't we, my dearest one?"

Luella's lips twitched; she looked at the flushed arrogant young face with irrepressible admiration.

"I reely b'lieve you think so!" she declared, and as his hand clinched and his eyes flashed dangerously, she raised her hand with a warning gesture.

"There, there now, I get enough o' that from your father!" she admonished him, adding quickly, "Does he know you're here?"

"I don't know," he answered irritably, "I never supposed he'd be here. I came up here because I'd made all my plans to—and I never let my plans be interfered with, if I can possibly avoid it. I told the man to get it ready for me, but just before we started he telegraphed that it was engaged for the season. But I came all the same, because I knew this little one would be empty. Father bought it up to protect himself. Does he know I'm here?"

Luella looked thoughtful. "I reely don't know," she said slowly.

"It'll come pretty hard on her, doin' her own work, won't it?" she went on, watching him curiously. Then, as he started angrily, "Oh, there ain't nobody here will come, by the day, or any other way—I sh'd s'pose you'd known that. And as for any o' the cottage people—heavens an' earth, Car'line, will you get up an' go home? I don't know what's come over me to forget that child—she sits so still—"

But as Caroline got sulkily from her seat, cowed by Luella's stern face, Dorothy put out her hand and caught the child's dress.

"Oh! Oh!" she cried hysterically, "don't send her away—don't, Frank! L-let me have somebody!"

"There, you see!" said Luella sadly, "you see how 'tis, Mr. Wortley. Do you mean to say you have the heart—"

"Dorothy, I don't understand you at all," said the young man, with evident self restraint.

"You probably do not realize the very trying position you put me in. I hope it is not necessary to explain to you, Mrs. Judd, that if Miss Hartley wishes to marry me, she has but to say the word, and it shall be done instantly—instantly!" he repeated with emphasis, "as if," Luella said later, "he'd had a minister in his side pocket."

"There, my dear, hear that!" she cried triumphantly, "now just tell him what you want—"

"You horrid woman, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" the girl broke in furiously. "How dare you intimate—as if I didn't know that Frank would do anything in the world I asked him to!"

"Oh, no, dearest," he broke in satirically, "that's a poor basis for action in this beautiful world of ours! Catch your man and tie him tight before he has time to change his mind. Then he'll be obliged to stay by you—you've got him hand and foot! That is love!"

"It's just as well, sometimes, though," Luella inserted placidly.

"Do you suppose I would ever," the girl stormed, "unless I—oh, dear, will somebody understand? Don't you know that my—that Frank has studied this question very deeply, that it's a matter of principle with us? If you had read all the dreadful things—"

"I am afraid, darling," he interrupted, with cold dignity, "that if your people and mine cannot understand the position I take, if we are actually obliged to take the matter into our own hands, and—and run away, in fact, in order to prove our sincerity, you can hardly expect people of a different—of less—with fewer—"

"I know what you mean, Mr. Wortley," Luella said gravely. She rose to her feet, beckoning to Caroline, whose waist the girl still clasped.