ing clock. Presently her pouting
lips parted, and she said:

"Five minutes after eleven! Nearly two hours, and it did not seem twenty
minutes! Oh, dear, what will he think of me!"

At the self-same moment Alonzo was staring at his clock. And presently
he said:

"Twenty-five minutes to three! Nearly two hours, and I didn't believe
it was two minutes! Is it possible that this clock is humbugging again?
Miss Ethelton! Just one moment, please. Are you there yet?"

"Yes, but be quick; I'm going right away."

"Would you be so kind as to tell me what time it is?"

The girl blushed again, murmured to herself, "It's right down cruel
of him to ask me!" and then spoke up and answered with admirably
counterfeited unconcern, "Five minutes after eleven."

"Oh, thank you! You have to go, now, have you?"

"I'm sorry."

No reply.

"Miss Ethelton!"

"Well?"

"You--you're there yet, ain't you?"

"Yes; but please hurry. What did you want to say?"

"Well, I--well, nothing in particular. It's very lonesome here. It's
asking a great deal, I know, but would you mind talking with me again by
and by--that is, if it will not trouble you too much?"

"I don't know but I'll think about it. I'll try."

"Oh, thanks! Miss Ethelton!... Ah, me, she's gone, and here are the
black clouds and the whirling snow and the raging winds come again! But
she said good-by. She didn't say good morning, she said good-by! ... The
clock was right, after all. What a lightning-winged two hours it was!"

He sat down, and gazed dreamily into his fire for a while, then heaved a
sigh and said:

"How wonderful it is! Two little hours ago I was a free man, and now my
heart's in San Francisco!"

About that time Rosannah Ethelton, propped in the window-seat of her
bedchamber, book in hand, was gazing vacantly out over the rainy seas
that washed the Golden Gate, and whispering to herself, "How different
he is from poor Burley, with his empty head and his single little antic
talent of mimicry!"

II

Four weeks later Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley was entertaining a gay
luncheon company, in a sumptuous drawing-room on Telegraph Hill, with
some capital imitations of the voices and gestures of certain popular
actors and San Franciscan literary people and Bonanza grandees. He was
elegantly upholstered, and was a handsome fellow, barring a trifling
cast in his eye. He seemed very jovial, but nevertheless he kept his eye
on the door with an expectant and uneasy w