ow did you know me?" he said.

"Know you!" was all the answer she made to that question. "Come into
the house. I've got some coffee on the stove for you. I've been up
and down the street waiting for you ever since it began to get light."

"Your grandfather won't--"

"He's at Uncle Jonas's; he won't be back till noon. There's no one
here."

She led him to the front-door, where he stamped and shook himself; he
was snow from head to foot.

"I'm running away from the good Gomorrah," he said, "but I've stopped
to look back, and I'm a pretty white pillar."

"I know where you stopped to look back," she answered, brushing him
heartily with her red hands. "You came in the alley way. It was
Mamie's window."

He did not reply, and the only visible token that he had any
consciousness of this clairvoyance of hers was a slight lift of his
higher eyebrow. She wasted no time in getting him to the kitchen,
where, when she had removed his overcoat, she placed him in a chair,
unwound the comforter, and, as carefully as a nurse, lifted the cap
from his injured head. When the strip of towel was disclosed she stood
quite still for a moment with the cap in her hand; then with a broken
little cry she stooped and kissed a lock of his hair, which escaped,
discolored, beneath the bandage.

"Stop that!" he commanded, horribly embarrassed.

"Oh, Joe," she cried, "I knew! I knew it was there--but to SEE it!
And it's my fault for leaving you--I HAD to go or I wouldn't have--I--"

"Where'd you hear about it?" he asked, shortly.

"I haven't been to bed," she answered. "Grandfather and I were up all
night at Uncle Jonas's, and Colonel Flitcroft came about two o'clock,
and he told us."

"Did he tell you about Norbert?"

"Yes--a great deal." She poured coffee into a cup from a pot on the
stove, brought it to him, then placing some thin slices of bread upon a
gridiron, began to toast them over the hot coals. "The Colonel said
that Norbert thought he wouldn't get well," she concluded; "and Mr. Arp
said Norbert was the kind that never die, and they had quite an
argument."

"What were you doing at Jonas Tabor's?" asked Joe, drinking his coffee
with a brightening eye.

"We were sent for," she answered.

"What for?"

She toasted the bread attentively without replying, and when she
decided that it was brown enough, piled it on a warm plate. This she
brought to him, and kneeling in front of him, her elbow on his knee,
offered f