tor's front yard the grass was vividly
green, gladioli and jonquils bordered the path with a bravery of color,
and the buds of the clambering rose on the porch trellis were swelling
to burst their calyxes.

Broffin turned in from the sidewalk and closed the gate noiselessly
behind him. If he saw the bravery of colors in the path borders it was
only with the outward eye. There was a faint stir on the porch, as of
some one parting the leafy screen to look out, but he neither quickened
his pace nor slowed it. While he had been three doors away in the
lake-fronting street, a small pocket binocular had assured him that the
young woman he was going to call upon was sitting in a porch rocker
behind the clambering rose, reading a book.

She had risen to meet him by the time he had mounted the steps, and he
knew that her first glance was appraisive. He had confidently counted
upon being mistaken for a strange patient in search of the doctor, and
he was not disappointed.

"You are looking for Doctor Farnham?" she began. "He is at his
office--201 Main Street."

Broffin was digging in his pocket for a card. It was not often that he
was constrained to introduce himself formally, and for an awkward second
or two the search was unrewarded. When he finally found the bit of
pasteboard he was explaining verbally.

"I know well enough where your father's office is, but you are the one I
wanted to see," he said; and he gave her the round-cornered card with
its blazonment of his name and employment.

He was watching her narrowly when she read the name and its underline,
and the quick indrawing of the breath and the little shudder that went
with it were not thrown away upon him. But the other signs; the pressing
of the even teeth upon the lower lip and the coming and going of three
straight lines between the half-closed eyes were not so favorable.

"Will you come into the house, Mr.----" she had to look at the card
again to get the name--"Mr. Broffin?" she asked.

"Thank you, Miss; it's plenty good enough out here for me if it is for
you," he returned, beginning to fear that the common civilities were
giving her time to get behind her defences.

She made way for him on the porch and pointed to a chair, which he took,
damning himself morosely when he caught his foot in the porch rug and
knocked the book from its resting-place on the railing.

"It is no matter," she said, when he would have gone outside to recover
the book; but he