what?" I whispered to Evan.

"Jackstraws," he answered, shaking with silent laughter.

* * * * *

Horace Bradford turned his mind for the next few days to the many things
about the place that needed his attention, resolving that he would let a
week or so elapse before making any further attempt to see Sylvia, and in
that time hoped to find Miss Lavinia at home, and from her possibly
receive some light upon the gossip about Mr. Bell, as well as news of
Sylvia herself.

The sinking-fund for repairs and rebuilding the house that he and his
mother had been accumulating ever since he had made his own way, he found
to be in a healthy condition. A new hay barn and poultry house was to be
put up at once; and, as soon as practicable, his wish of many years, to
restore the brick house, that had been marred by "lean-tos" in the wrong
places, to its colonial simplicity, could be at least begun.

Every day until two or three o'clock in the afternoon he gave to these
affairs, and then he went to his books. But here again he met with a
strange surprise, a new sensation,--he could neither fix his mind upon
writing, nor take in what he read; the letters were as meaningless as
fly specks on the pages. After a day or two he gave up the attempt. He
had worked too closely during the last term, he thought; his sight did
not register on his brain,--he had heard of such cases; he would rest a
week or so.

Then every afternoon he walked over the Ridge to the little river in the
valley, carrying a book in his pocket, and his fishing-rod as a sort of
excuse, and poling an old flatboat down-stream to a shady spot under the
trees, propped his rod in place, where by a miracle he occasionally
caught a perch or bass, sat looking idly into the water, the brim of an
old felt hat turned down about his eyes. One day, near the week's end, as
he was lounging thus, his eye was attracted by a headline in a bit of
newspaper in which he had wrapped his bait box to save his pocket. It was
a semi-local paper from town, one that his mother took, but which they
seldom either of them read, and the date was three days back. He turned
it over idly, pausing as he did so to pull up the line which was being
jerked violently, but only by a mud eel. Why did he return again to the
scrap of paper when he had freed his hook? His eyes caught strange words,
and his hands began to tremble as he read. It was the condensed report of
the Latham