long deep sigh. "I feel as if I could walk
out through that brightness and find her. I reckon that such hopes
wouldn't be allowed to lie to us; that so many ages of men couldn't have
fooled themselves so. I'm glad I've seen this." He was silent and they
both remained watching the rising sun till they could not bear its
splendor. "Now," said the major, "it must be time for that mud, as you
call it." Over their coffee and crackers at the end of the table which
they had to themselves, he resumed. "I was thinking all the time--we
seem to think half a dozen things at once, and this was one of
them--about a piece of business I've got to settle when I reach home;
and perhaps you can advise me about it; you're an editor. I've got a
newspaper on my hands; I reckon it would be a pretty good thing, if it
had a chance; but I don't know what to do with it: I got it in trade
with a fellow who has to go West for his lungs, but he's staying till I
get back. What's become of that young chap--what's his name?--that went
out with us?"

"Burnamy?" prompted March, rather breathlessly.

"Yes. Couldn't he take hold of it? I rather liked him. He's smart, isn't
he?"

"Very," said March. "But I don't know where he is. I don't know that he
would go into the country--. But he might, if--"

They entered provisionally into the case, and for argument's sake
supposed that Burnamy would take hold of the major's paper if he could
be got at. It really looked to March like a good chance for him, on
Eltwin's showing; but he was not confident of Burnamy's turning up very
soon, and he gave the major a pretty clear notion why, by entering into
the young fellow's history for the last three months.

"Isn't it the very irony of fate?" he said to his wife when he found
her in their room with a cup of the same mud he had been drinking, and
reported the facts to her.

"Irony?" she said, with all the excitement he could have imagined or
desired. "Nothing of the kind. It's a leading, if ever there was one.
It will be the easiest thing in the world to find Burnamy. And out there
she can sit on her steps!"

He slowly groped his way to her meaning, through the hypothesis of
Burnamy's reconciliation and marriage with Agatha Triscoe, and their
settlement in Major Eltwin's town under social conditions that implied a
habit of spending the summer evenings on their front porch. While he
was doing this she showered him with questions and conjectures and
requisitions