gainst the panes
of Lilly Mercer's boudoir, the weird _staccato_ passed into her restless
spirit and filled her mind with wild, reckless fancies. The storm had
beaten up against the cottage but a little time until it brought Bland
with it.

He came to tell his Lilly, he said, that the cursed church interests
would compel him to go to the West, to be absent for several weeks. In
mentioning the fact he sat down by the fireplace and gave her some money
for use while he was away, and also counted over quite an amount which
he had provided for his travelling expenses.

He also told her that he should leave the next evening, and would,
after a little time, of course, return for the night, as he could never
go on so long a journey without spending the parting hours with his
little bird, as he had come to call her.

His little bird had sat remarkably passive during all this, but now
fluttered about him with cooings and regrets innumerable, and seemed to
still be in a flutter of excitement when he had gone; for, after walking
up and down the rooms for a time, she flung some wrappings about her,
and quickly glided out among the pelting flakes that hid her among the
hurrying thousands upon the streets and within the shops, until she as
rapidly returned.

Within the warm nest again, there was a note to be written, and several
feathery but valuable trifles to be got together. In fact, Bland's
little bird was a busy bird, until when, at a late hour, he came back to
its unusually tender ways and wooings, and was soon slumbering beside
it.

Then the little bird became a great raven of the night, and stole
quietly about the apartments, gathering together, quite like any other
raven, everything that pleased its fancy, including even the money that
was to have been used in the "cursed church interests," and the gold
watch that ticked away at its sleeping owner's head, but not loud enough
to awaken him, for he slept with a peculiar heaviness, and, strangely
enough, with a folded handkerchief across his face. But the raven of the
cottage, in a quiet way that ravens have, never ceased gathering what
pleased it, until the early hours of morning, when, kissing its beak to
the bed and the sleeper, and flinging upon the bed a little note which
read:

_A double expose if you like._

LILLY "MERCER."--

took itself and its gathered treasures out into the storm and the night.

The storm was