r mountain air is drugging me,
Mrs. Durgin. I shall have to say good-night, or I shall tumble asleep
before I get upstairs. Oh, I can find the way, I guess; this part of
the house seems the same." He got away from them, and with the lamp that
Jackson gave him found his way to his room. A few moments later some
one knocked at his door, and a boy stood there with a pitcher. "Some
ice-water, Mr. Westover?"

"Why, is that you, Franky? I'm glad to see you again. How are you?"

"I'm pretty well," said the boy, shyly. He was a very handsome little
fellow of distinctly dignified presence, and Westover was aware at once
that here was not a subject for patronage. "Is there anything else you
want, Mr. Westover? Matches, or soap, or anything?" He put the pitcher
down and gave a keen glance round the room.

"No, everything seems to be here, Frank," said Westover.

"Well, good-night," said the boy, and he slipped out, quietly closing
the door after him.

Westover pushed up his window and looked at Lion's Head in the
moonlight. It slumbered as if with the sleep of centuries-austere,
august. The moon-rays seemed to break and splinter on the outline of the
lion-shape, and left all the mighty mass black below.

In the old porch under his window Westover heard whispering. Then, "You
behave yourself, Jeff Durgin!" came in a voice which could be no other
than Cynthia Whitwell's, and Jeff Durgin's laugh followed.

He saw the girl in the morning. She met him at the door of the
dining-room, and he easily found in her shy, proud manner, and her pure,
cold beauty, the temperament and physiognomy of the child he remembered.
She was tall and slim, and she held herself straight without stiffness;
her face was fine, with a straight nose, and a decided chin, and a mouth
of the same sweetness which looked from her still, gray eyes; her hair,
of the average brown, had a rough effect of being quickly tossed into
form, which pleased him; as she slipped down the room before him to
place him at table he saw that she was, as it were, involuntarily,
unwillingly graceful. She made him think of a wild sweetbrier, of a
hermit-thrush; but, if there were this sort of poetic suggestion in
Cynthia's looks, her acts were of plain and honest prose, such as giving
Westover the pleasantest place and the most intelligent waitress in the
room.

He would have liked to keep her in talk a moment, but she made
business-like despatch of all his allusions to the past,