is all right. I'd like to ask her, if I hadn't promised aunt Deborah."

Just here, Gifford heard the garden gate close with a bang, and some one
came down the path, holding an umbrella against the pelting rain, so that
his face was hidden. But Gifford knew who it was, even before Mary,
shuffling asthmatically through the hall, opened the door to say, "Mr.
Forsythe's here to see you."

"Ask him to come in," he said, pushing his chair back from the secretary,
and lifting the flap to lock it as he spoke.

Dick Forsythe came in, shaking his dripping umbrella, and saying with a
good-natured laugh, "Jove! what a wet day! You need a boat to get through
the garden. Your aunt--the old one, I think it was--asked me, if I was
passing, to bring you these overshoes. She was afraid you had none, and
would take cold."

He laughed again, as though he knew how amusing such nonsense was, and
then had a gleam of surprise at Gifford's gravity.

"I'd gone to her house with a message from my mother," he continued; "you
know we get off to-morrow. Mother's decided to go, too, so of course
there are a good many things to do, and the old lady is so strict about
Ashurst customs I've had to go round and 'return thanks' to everybody."

Gifford had taken the parcel from Dick's hand, and thanked him briefly.
The young man, however, seemed in no haste to go.

"I don't know which is damper, this room or out-of-doors," he said,
seating himself in Mr. Denner's big chair,--though Gifford was
standing--and looking about in an interested way; "must have been a
gloomy house to live in. Wonder he never got married. Perhaps he couldn't
find anybody willing to stay in such a hole,--it's so confoundedly damp.
He died in here, didn't he?" This was in a lower voice.

"Yes," Gifford answered.

"Shouldn't think you'd stay alone," Dick went on; "it is awfully dismal.
I see he cheered himself once in a while." He pointed to a tray, which
held a varied collection of pipes and a dingy tobacco pouch of buckskin
with a border of colored porcupine quills.

"Yes, Mr. Denner smoked," Gifford was constrained to say.

"I think," said Dick, clapping his hand upon his breast-pocket, "I'll
have a cigar myself. It braces one up this weather." He struck a match on
the sole of his boot, forgetting it was wet, and vowing good-naturedly
that he was an ass. "No objection, I suppose?" he added, carefully biting
off the end of his cigar.

"I should prefer," Gifford replied s