if he ever wants to break into my family!"

With this Hood rose and drew from his pocket a handful of newspaper
clippings which he threw into the air and watched flutter to the floor.

"Those are some of your advertisements offering handsome rewards for news
of me dead or alive. In collecting them I've had a mighty good time.
Let's all go to sleep; to-morrow night the genial Fogarty will get us out
of this. He's over there now sawing the first bar of that window!"

X

A year has passed and it is May again and the last day of that month of
enchantment. There has been a house-party at the Deering place at Radford
Hills. Constance came from Wyoming to spend May with her father, bringing
with her, of course, her husband, sometime known as Cassowary, who has
been elected to the legislature of his State and, may, it is reported, be
governor one of these days. The Tyringhams are there, and this includes
Robert Tyringham, _alias_ R. Hood, and his wife (whose authorship of "The
Madness of May," has not yet been acknowledged) and also her father,
Augustus Davis, who continues to find recreation in frequent attacks upon
any inoffensive piano that gets in his way. Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ranscomb,
too, have shared Mr. Deering's hospitality. Marriage has not interrupted
Mrs. Ranscomb's career as an artist, though she has dropped illustrating,
and is specializing in children's portraits with distinguished success.

The senior Deering, wholly at peace with his conscience, does not work as
hard as he used to before his taste of adventurous life gained in the
pursuit of Hood. He is very proud of his daughter-in-law, whose brown
eyes bring constant cheer and happiness to his table. If she does not
hang moons in trees any more, she is still quite capable of doing so, and
has no idea of permitting her husband to wear himself out in the
banking-house. They are going to keep some time every year for play, she
declares, to the very end of their lives.

Hood had been devoting himself assiduously to mastering the details of
his business affairs, living as other men do, keeping regular office
hours in a tall building with an outlook toward the sea, and taking his
recreation on the golf-links every other afternoon.

"Mamma has been nervous all this month about papa," Roberta (known
otherwise as Pierrette or Bobby) was saying as she and Billy slowly paced
the veranda. "But now May is over and he hasn't shown any disposition to
run away.