s father?" "Hush!"
said Kate decidedly. "He is an angel, I dare say." She added with a
delicious irrelevance, which was, however, perfectly understood by her
feminine auditors, "We are looking like three frights."

Cautiously skirting the fences, they at last pulled up a few feet from
a dark wall. The stranger proceeded to assist them to alight. There was
still some light from the reflected snow; and, as he handed his fair
companions to the ground, each was conscious of undergoing an intense
though respectful scrutiny. He assisted them gravely to open the window,
and then discreetly retired to the sleigh until the difficult and
somewhat discomposing ingress was made. He then walked to the window,
"Thank you and good-night!" whispered three voices. A single figure
still lingered. The stranger leaned over the window-sill. "Will you
permit me to light my cigar here? it might attract attention if I struck
a match outside." By the upspringing light he saw the figure of Kate
very charmingly framed in by the window. The match burnt slowly out
in his fingers. Kate smiled mischievously. The astute young woman had
detected the pitiable subterfuge. For what else did she stand at the
head of her class, and had doting parents paid three years' tuition?

The storm had passed, and the sun was shining quite cheerily in the
eastern recitation-room the next morning, when Miss Kate, whose seat
was nearest the window, placing her hand pathetically upon her heart,
affected to fall in bashful and extreme agitation upon the shoulder of
Carry her neighbor. "HE has come," she gasped in a thrilling whisper.
"Who?" asked Carry sympathetically, who never clearly under stood when
Kate was in earnest. "Who?--why, the man who rescued us last night! I
saw him drive to the door this moment. Don't speak: I shall be better in
a moment--there!" she said; and the shameless hypocrite passed her hand
pathetically across her forehead with a tragic air.

"What can he want?" asked Carry, whose curiosity was excited.

"I don't know," said Kate, suddenly relapsing into gloomy cynicism.
"Possibly to put his five daughters to school; perhaps to finish his
young wife, and warn her against us."

"He didn't look old, and he didn't seem like a married man," rejoined
Addy thoughtfully.

"That was his art, you poor creature!" returned Kate scornfully. "You
can never tell any thing of these men, they are so deceitful Besides,
it's just my fate!"

"Why, Kate," bega