of a village. The gardens around the houses,
the flowers and vines, the wide shady streets, combined to make an
atmosphere of homelikeness; but to Frances' mind its greatest charm lay
in the fact that once, long ago, her father had lived here. At least she
felt sure it must have been long ago, for it was in that strange time
before there was any Frances Morrison.

She had never heard as much as she wanted to hear about these years,
although she had heard a good deal. There were some things her father
evidently did not care to talk about, and one of these was a mysterious
individual known as a Certain Person. The first time she had heard this
Certain Person mentioned she had questioned her mother, who had replied,
"It is some one who was once a friend of father's, but is not now. I
think he does not care to mention the name, dear."

After this Frances asked no more questions, but she thought a great
deal, and her imagination began to picture a tall, fierce looking man
who lurked in dark corners ready to spring out at her. Sometimes when
she was on the street at night she would see him skulking along in the
shadows, and would clasp her father's hand more closely. Altogether this
person had grown and flourished in her mind in a wonderful way.

And, she couldn't tell how, a Certain Person was connected in her
thoughts with "The Girl in the Golden Doorway." This was a story in her
very own story-book, a collection of tales known only to her father and
herself, which had all been told in the firelight on winter evenings and
afterward written out in Mr. Morrison's clear hand in a book bought for
the purpose, so that not even a printer knew anything about them.

This particular story, which she had heard many times, was of a boy who
lived in a great old-fashioned house in the country, where there were
beautiful things all about, both indoors and out. The only other child
in the house was a little girl who looked down from a heavy gilt frame
above the library mantel. The boy, who was just six years old, used to
lie on the hearth rug, gazing up at her, and sometimes she would smile
and beckon to him as if she wanted to be friends.

This happened only at nightfall when the shadows lay dark in the corners
of the room and the fire blazed brightly; at such times things that had
before been a puzzle to him became quite clear. For instance, he
discovered one evening that what looked like the frame of a picture was
really a doorway