to
fumble the key greatly, and he kept his face turned from her gaze.

"What's the matter, Marty?" she asked, lightly.

"Matter? Ain't nothin' the matter," grunted the boy.

"Why, Marty! you're crying!" gasped Janice, suddenly.

"Ain't neither!" growled the boy, wiping his rough coat sleeve across
his eyes. "Snow's blowed in 'em."

"That's more than snow, Marty," was Janice's confident remark.

"Huh!" snorted Marty. "Girls allus know so much!"

He seemed to have suddenly acquired "a grouch." So Janice went
cheerily about the room, singing softly to herself, and lighting the
lamps. Nobody else had arrived, for it was still early in the evening.

Marty stole softly to the stove. The fire had been banked, and the
room was quite chilly. He rattled the dampers, opened them, and then,
with a side glance at his cousin, pulled the paper from within the
breast of his jacket and thrust it in upon the black coals before he
closed the stove door.

"Where's the New York paper, Marty?" Janice was asking, as she arranged
the Montpelier and the Albany papers on their files.

"Didn't come," grunted Marty, and picked up the empty coal hod. "I got
to git some coal," he added, and dashed outside into the snow.

Instantly the girl hastened across the room. She jerked the stove door
open. There lay the folded paper, just beginning to brown in the heat
of the generating gas. She snatched it from the fire and, hearing the
outer door opened again, thrust the paper inside her blouse.

It wasn't Marty, but was one of the other boys. She did not understand
why her cousin should have told her an untruth about the New York
paper. But she did not want an open rupture with him here and now--and
before other people.

"I'm going right home," she said to Marty, when he came back with the
replenished coal hod. "It's snowing real hard."

"Sure. There won't be many of the fellows around to-night, anyway.
Peter here will stay all evening and lock up--if Mr. Haley don't come.
Won't you, Pete?"

"Sure," was the reply.

"Then I'll go along with you," declared Marty, who wasn't half as
ashamed to escort a girl on the street nowadays as he had been a few
months before.

Now, Janice had intended running over to Hopewell Drugg's store and
looking at the paper Marty had tried to destroy. She did not for a
moment suspect what was in it, or why her cousin had told her a
falsehood about it. But she saw she would have to defer the