d Delcote. "Was he...?"

"Oh, you mean ... Bertrand?" flushed Flame. "Oh, truly, I didn't
invite him! He just butted in ... same as you!"

"Same as ... I?" stammered Delcote.

"Well..." floundered Flame. "Well ... you know what I mean and ..."

With peculiar intentness the Master of the House fixed his eyes on the
knotted white handkerchief which Flame had thrown across the corner of
her chair.

"And is this 'Bertrand' person so ... so dazzling," he questioned,
"that human eye may not look safely upon his countenance?"

"Bertrand ... dazzling?" protested Flame. "Oh, no! He's really quite
dull.... It was only," she explained with sudden friendliness, "It was
only that I had promised Mother not to 'see' him.... So, of course,
when he butted in I...."

"O--h," relaxed the Master of the House. With a precipitous flippancy
of manners which did not conform at all to the somewhat tragic
austerity of his face he snatched up his knife and fork and thumped
joyously on the table with the handles of them. "And some people talk
about a country village being dull in the Winter Time!" he chuckled.
"With a Dog's Masquerade and a Robbery at the Rectory all happening
the same evening!" Grabbing her cat in her arms, Flame jerked her
chair back from the table.

"A--a robbery at the Rectory?" she gasped. "Why--why, I'm the Rectory!
I must go home at once!"

"Oh, Shucks!" shrugged the Master of the House. "It's all over now.
But the people at the railroad station were certainly buzzing about it
as I came through."

"B--buzzing about it?" articulated Flame with some difficulty.

Expeditiously the Master of the House resumed his rending of the
turkey.

"Are you really from the Rectory?" he questioned. "How amusing....
Well, there's nothing really you could do about it now.... The
constable and his prisoner are already on their way to the County
Seat--wherever that may be. And a freshly 'burgled' house is rather a
creepy place for a young girl to return to all alone.... Your parents
are away, I believe?"

"Con--stable ... constable," babbled Flame quite idiotically.

"Yes, the regular constable was off Christmasing somewhere it seems,
so he put a substitute on his job, a stranger from somewhere. Some
substitute that! No mulling over hot toddies on Christmas night for
him! He _saw_ the marauder crawling in through the Rectory window! He
_saw_ him fumbling now to the left, now to the right, all through the
front hall! He follow