its flat acre of snowy lawn like a rich, fat man enraged and sitting
straight up in bed to swear.

And yet there was one charming thing about this ugly house. Some
workmen were enclosing a large side porch with heavy canvas, evidently
for festal purposes. Looking out from between two strips of the canvas
was the rosy and delicate face of a pretty girl, smiling upon Eugene
Bantry as he passed. It was an obviously pretty face, all the youth
and prettiness there for your very first glance; elaborately pretty,
like the splendid profusion of hair about and above it--amber-colored
hair, upon which so much time had been spent that a circle of large,
round curls rose above the mass of it like golden bubbles tipping a
coronet.

The girl's fingers were pressed thoughtfully against her chin as Eugene
strode into view; immediately her eyes widened and brightened. He
swung along the fence with the handsomest appearance of
unconsciousness, until he reached a point nearly opposite her. Then he
turned his head, as if haphazardly, and met her eyes. At once she
threw out her hand towards him, waving him a greeting--a gesture which,
as her fingers had been near her lips, was a little like throwing a
kiss. He crooked an elbow and with a one-two-three military movement
removed his small-brimmed hat, extended it to full arm's-length at the
shoulder-level, returned it to his head with Life-Guard precision. This
was also new to Canaan. He was letting Mamie Pike have it all at once.

The impression was as large as he could have desired. She remained at
the opening in the canvas and watched him until he wagged his shoulders
round the next corner and disappeared into a cross street. As for
Eugene, he was calm with a great calm, and very red.

He had not covered a great distance, however, before his gravity was
replaced by his former smiling look of the landed gentleman amused by
the innocent pastimes of the peasants, though there was no one in sight
except a woman sweeping some snow from the front steps of a cottage,
and she, not perceiving him, retired in-doors without knowing her loss.
He had come to a thinly built part of the town, the perfect quiet of
which made the sound he heard as he opened the picket gate of his own
home all the more startling. It was a scream--loud, frantic, and
terror-stricken.

Eugene stopped, with the gate half open.

Out of the winter skeleton of a grape-arbor at one side of the
four-square brick ho