experience with the molasses, Flint
left him to struggle with the contents of the wagon, while he himself
escorted Brady up the narrow, sagging stairs, and ensconced him in a
room next his own,--a room whose windows looked out like his over the
purple stretch of ocean, now opalescent with reflection of the clouds.

"Where do you take your bath?" Brady asked, looking round somewhat
helplessly.

"In there, you land-lubber!" answered Flint, pointing out to sea;
"isn't the tub big enough?"

Brady laughed, a hearty, boyish, infectious laugh. "All right," he
said, "only it seems rather odd to come East for pioneering. Did you
know, by the way, that I am to be in New York this winter?"

"No!"

"Yes. Our house is just establishing a branch office there, and I am
to be at the head of it."

Flint chuckled.

"Bison establishing a branch office in New York! The humor of the
thing delights me."

"I don't see anything so very funny about it," answered Brady, rather
testily; "but I have no stomach for a quarrel till I have had some
supper--unless you sup _out there_," he added with a lordly wave of
his hand towards the ocean in imitation of Flint's gesture. "I hope,
at any rate, our evening meal is not to be of farina. The associations
might be a little too strong even for my appetite."

CHAPTER IV

THE DAVITTS

"The short and simple annals of the poor."

After taking leave of Flint and his companion in misfortune, Winifred
quickened her pace. The lengthening shadows warned her that if she
intended to return to the White House before supper was over, she had
no time to lose.

"Come, Paddy!" she said, laying her hand with a light, caressing
gesture on the shaggy red-brown head of the Irish setter, which had
kept closer guard than ever since the meeting with the strangers in
the road,--"come, Paddy! we must make a sprint for it."

The dog, glad enough to be allowed the luxury of a gallop, set off
pell-mell, and Winifred followed at a gait which soon brought her,
flushed and out of breath, before the unpainted house where the Davitt
family made their abode. It was not characterized by great order or
tidiness. Clothes-lines, hung with underwear of various shapes and
sizes, decorated the side-yard, and proclaimed Mrs. Davitt's calling.
A whole section of the front fence had taken itself off. The gate
swung aimlessly on one rusty hinge, and a