wind and a flood of rain
as she did so, and a tall figure in a rubber coat almost fell into the
room.

"Why, it's our delivery-boy-mail-carrier!" cried Betty, as the young
giant recovered himself and pulled off his dripping hat.

"Yes'm," he replied, with a good-natured grin that stretched from ear to
ear. "The very same, an' at your service."

"But how did you manage to get here?" cried Betty, too astonished even
to offer the unexpected visitor a seat. "You never could drive through
that awful mud."

"No'm, I reckon mos' likely I couldn't," he answered amiably, adding
with a return of the loquacity that was his most marked failing: "I
remember one year we had a storm near's bad as this, an' Luke Bailey, he
got kind of short o' pervisions--campin' in the woods he was--an' he
tried to drive his team into town--"

"But you said you didn't drive out!" Grace interrupted. "And if you
didn't drive, you must have walked all the way."

"Yes'm, reckon I did. Well, Luke he got jest about as fur--"

"But why did you come?" broke in Mollie, unable to bear the suspense any
longer.

"I got this here package of letters," he replied, seeming suddenly to
remember the cause of his errand. "Some o' them came a couple o' days
ago, but I said to myself I might jest as well wait an' see if the
weather didn't clear up--"

"And so when it didn't, you walked away up here in all the rain," Betty
finished for him, real gratitude in her voice. "It was most awfully kind
of you."

"Oh, that ain't nothin'," he denied, fidgeting uneasily, while Mollie
hastily sorted the letters. "I ain't never finished tellin' you what
happened to Luke Bailey--"

He was off again, and the girls were vaguely conscious of his voice
rambling on and on while they eagerly scanned the handwriting on their
letters.

Then suddenly Betty gave a little cry and stumbled back against the
table, holding on to it for support.

"Betty! Honey! What is it?" cried Amy. "You look as white as a ghost."

"A letter," she gasped, holding out an envelope with the familiar red
diamond in the corner. She was shaking from head to foot. "Girls, oh,
girls, it's from Allen!" Then she turned and fled from the room.

Luke Bailey's biographer stared after her stupidly while the girls
gasped and looked wildly at one another for confirmation of what they
had heard.

"A letter!" she had said. "From Allen!"

Then he was not dead--their dazed brains comprehended that fact. And he
c