eful!"

Her lodger checked a rising smile, and leaned solicitously toward her,
regarding her firm, fine-featured face with flattering attention.

"Are you growing stronger? Can I bring you anything?" he inquired.

Miss Gould's color rose, half with anger at her weakness of body, half
with a vexed consciousness of his amusement.

"Thank you, no," she returned coldly, "I am ashamed to have been so
weak-minded. I must go now and tell Henry to pile the wood again in the
east corner. There will probably come another tramp very soon--they are
very prevalent this month, I hear."

Her lodger left his low wicker seat--a proof of enormous excitement--and
frowned at her.

"Do you seriously mean, Miss Gould, that you are going to run the risk
of another such--such catastrophe? It is absurd. I cannot believe it of
you! Is there no other way--"

But he had been standing a long while, it occurred to him, and he
retired to the chair again. A splinter of wood on his immaculate white
flannel coat caught his eye, and a slow smile spread over his handsome,
lazy face. It grew and grew until at last a distinct chuckle penetrated
to the dusky corner where the Indian chair leaned back against dull
Oriental draperies. Its occupant attempted to rise, her face stern, her
mouth unrelenting. He was at her side instantly.

"Take my arm--and pardon me!" he said with an irresistible grace. "It is
only my fear for your comfort, you know, Miss Gould. I cannot bear that
you should be at the mercy of every drunken fellow that wishes to impose
on you!"

As she crossed the hall that separated her territory from his, her fine,
full figure erect, her dark head high in the air, a whimsical regret
came over him that they were not younger and more foolish.

"I should certainly marry her to reform her," he said to the birch log
that spluttered on his inimitable colonial fire-dogs. And then, as the
remembrance of the events of the morning came to him, he laughed again.

He had been disturbed at his leisurely coffee and roll by a rapid
and ceaseless pounding, followed by a violent rattling, and varied by
stifled cries apparently from the woodshed. The din seemed to come from
the lower part of the house, and after one or two futile appeals to the
man who served as valet, cook, and butler in his bachelor establishment,
he decided that he was alone in his half of the house, and that the
noise came from Miss Gould's side. He strolled down the beautiful
win