fter a series of struggles Evan succeeded in getting to his
knees. If this sounds easy let the doubter have his hands tied behind
him, and his ankles tied together, and try it. This brought his head
above the level of the window-sill, but the view out the window
scarcely repaid him for his trouble. It was much what one might have
expected from the condition of the house, a door-yard grown high with
grass and weeds, a clump of tiger-lilies, some aged lilac bushes, a few
rotten palings marking the line where a fence had run.

Beyond the fence was the road, only a slight depression now in the
expanse of weeds. The automobile that had brought Evan was standing
there. It was a shabby little landaulet with the top up. It looked
like a taxi-cab but carried no metre. Beyond the line of the road the
view was shut off by second-growth woods, with a larger tree rising
here and there.

It looked like a spot long forgotten of man, yet Evan doubted if it
were more than eight miles from Harlem river, and the chances were that
it was actually within the New York city limits. Indeed while he
looked he heard the faint-far-off chorus of the noon whistles in town.

Hearing the old darkey's shuffling step in the hall, he hastily lay
down again. But her sharp eyes instantly marked the change in his
position and detected the dust on his knees.

"Ah reckon the sun's too strong for yo' eyes," she said dryly. There
were stout, old-fashioned wooden shutters folded back into the
window-frames. These she closed and hooked, and Evan was left in gloom.

There was nothing the matter with the dinner she presently brought him;
corn soup, fried chicken and hominy. She fed him with the anxious
solicitude of a nurse. Indeed Aunt Liza throughout evinced the
greatest willingness to make friends; she was so fat and comfortable
she just couldn't help it. It was only when Evan started to question
her that she showed what a tricksy spirit inhabited the solid frame.

After dinner Evan heard the automobile leave. He guessed that he and
Aunt Liza were now alone in the tumbledown house. During the long hot
afternoon she left him pretty much to his own devices. He could hear
the bees humming outside, and the twitter of birds.

In stories Evan had read when the hero was captured and tied up he
always succeeded in "working himself free" at the critical moment.
Well Evan patiently set to work to free his hands, but after hours of
effort, as it se