ak to her: he had a sharp
conviction that the greatest of all the hazards lay in the chance that
she might remember his voice.

He found the cheery little doctor waiting for him when he had walked the
few squares to the Main Street office.

"I was beginning to be afraid you were going to be fashionably late,"
said the potential host; and then, with a humorous glance for the
correct garmenting: "Regalia, heh? Hasn't Miss Grierson told you that
Wahaska is still hopelessly unable to live up to the dress-coat and
standing collar? I'm sure she must have. But never mind; climb into the
buggy and we'll let old Bucephalus take us around to see if the
neighbors have brought in anything good to eat."

The drive was a short one, and it ended at the gate through which
Matthew Broffin had preceded by only a few hours the man whose eventual
appearance at the Farnham home he had so confidently predicted. As at
many another odd moment when there had been nothing better to do,
Broffin was once more shadowing the house in which, first or last, he
expected to trap his amateur MacHeath; and when the buggy was halted at
the carriage step he was near enough to mark and recognize the doctor's
companion.

"Not this time," he muttered, sourly, when the two had passed together
up the gravelled path and the host was fitting his latch-key to the
front door. "It's only the sick man that writes books. I wonder what
sort of a book he thinks he's going to write in this inforgotten,
turkey-trodden, come-along village of the Reuben yaps!"

Griswold, waiting on the porch while Doctor Farnham fitted his key, had
a nerve-tingling shiver of apprehension when the latch yielded with a
click and he found himself under the hall lantern formally shaking hands
with the statuesque young woman of the many imaginings. It gave him a
curious thrill of mingled terror and joy to find her absolutely
unchanged. Having, for his own part, lived through so many experiences
since that final glimpse of her standing on the saloon-deck guards of
the _Belle Julie_ at St. Louis, the distance in time seemed almost
immeasurable.

"You are very welcome to Home Nook, Mr. Griswold; we have been hearing
about you for many weeks," she was saying when he had relinquished the
firm hand and was hanging his coat and hat on the hall-rack. And then,
with a half-embarrassed laugh: "I am afraid we are dreadful gossips; all
Wahaska has been talking about you, you know, and wondering how it