ve were universally respected, in a word, and their dinner-parties
were always prominently chronicled by the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_;
and that Anne took excellent care of little Roger, and that she and her
second husband proved eminently suited to each other.

But, as a matter of fact, not one of these things ever happened....

"I have been thinking it over," Anne deplored. "Oh, Rudolph dear, I
perfectly realize you are the best and noblest man I ever knew. And I
have always loved you very much, my dear; that is why I could never
abide poor Mrs. Pendomer. And yet--it is a feeling I simply can't
explain----"

"That you belong to Jack in spite of everything?" the colonel said.
"Why, but of course! I might have known that Jack would never have
allowed any simple incidental happening such as his death to cause his
missing a possible trick."

Anne would have comforted Rudolph Musgrave; but, to her discomfiture,
the colonel was grinning, however ruefully.

"I was thinking," he stated, "of the only time that I ever, to my
knowledge, talked face to face with the devil. It is rather odd how
obstinately life clings to the most hackneyed trick of ballad-makers;
and still naively pretends to enrich her productions by the stale device
of introducing a refrain--so that the idlest remarks of as much as three
years ago keep cropping up as the actual gist of the present!...
However, were it within my power, I would evoke Amaimon straightway now
to come up yonder, through your hearthrug, and to answer me quite
honestly if I did not tell him on the beach at Matocton that this,
precisely this, would be the outcome of your knowing everything!"

"I told you that I couldn't, quite, _explain_----" Anne said.

"Eh, but I can, my dear," he informed her. "The explanation is that
Lichfield bore us, shaped us, and made us what we are. We may not enjoy
a monopoly of the virtues here in Lichfield, but there is one trait at
least which the children of Lichfield share in common. We are loyal. We
give but once; and when we give, we give all that we have; and when we
have once given it, neither common-sense, nor a concourse of
expostulating seraphim, nor anything else in the universe, can induce us
to believe that a retraction, or even a qualification, of the gift would
be quite worthy of us."

"But that--that's foolish. Why, it's unreasonable," Anne pointed out.

"Of course it is. And that is why I am proud of Lichfield. And that is
why you