stle within him
again.

"Let's we go see the pigeons," Bug suggested, tossing his ball in his
hands.

Burgess remembered what Bond had said of the woman's leaving. There
could be no harm in going inside, he thought. The leafless trees
and shrubbery revealed the neat little home that the summer foliage
concealed. Bug ran forward with childish curiosity and tiptoed up to a
low window, dropping his little red ball in his eagerness.

"Oh, tum! tum!" he cried. "Such a pretty picture frame and vase on the
table."

He was nearly five years old now, but in his excitement he still used
baby language, as he pulled eagerly at Vincent Burgess' coat.

"It isn't nice to peep, Bug," Burgess insisted, but he shaded his eyes
and glanced in to please the boy. He did not note the pretty gilt frame
nor the vase beside it on the table. But the face looking out of that
frame made him turn almost as cold and limp as Fenneben had been when
he was dragged from the river. Catching the little one by the hand he
hurried away.

At the gateway he lifted Bug in his arms.

He was not yet at ease with children.

"I dropped my ball," Bug said. "Let me det it."

"Oh, no; I'll get you another one. Don't go back," Burgess urged. "Do
you know it is very rude to look into windows. Let's never tell anybody
we did it; nor ever, ever do it again. Will you remember?"

"Umph humph! I mean, yes, sir! I won't fornever do it again, nor tell
nobody." Bug buttoned up his lips for a sphinx-like secrecy. "Nobody but
Dennie. And I may fordet it for her."

"Yes, forget it, and we'll go away up the river and see other things.
Bug, what do you say when you want to keep from doing wrong?"

Bug looked up confidingly.

"I ist say, 'Dod, be merciless to me, a sinner'."

"Why not merciful, Bug?"

"Tause! If He's merciful it's too easy and I'm no dooder," Bug said,
wisely.

"Who told you the difference?" Burgess asked.

"Vic. He knows a lot. I wish I had my ball, but let's go up the river."

"Out of the mouths of babes," Burgess murmured and hugged the little one
close to him.

Victor Burleigh was in the little balcony of the dome late that
afternoon fixing a defective wiring. Through the open windows he could
see the skyline in every direction. The far-reaching gray prairie,
overhung by its dome of amethyst bordered round with opal and rimmed
with jasper, seemed in every blending tint and tone to call him back to
Norrie. The west bluff above the old K