nly. She doesn't know me."

"She doesn't know me, either," said Gaites. He added: "And a man's
name--"

"To be sure! Why didn't I think of that?" and she affixed a signature in
which the baptismal name gave away her romantic and impulsive
generation--Elaine W. Maze. "_Now_," she triumphed, as Gaites
helped her into her trap--"_now_ I shall have a little peace of my
life!"

IV.

Mrs. Maze had no great trouble in making Gaites stay over Sunday. The
argument she used was, "No freight out till Monday, you know." The
inducement was June Alber, whom she said she had already engaged to go
canoeing with Gaites Sunday afternoon.

That afternoon was exquisite. The sky was cloudless, and of one blue
with the river and the girl's eyes, as Gaites noted while she sat facing
him from the bow of the canoe. But the day was of the treacherous
serenity of a weather-breeder, and the next morning brought a storm of
such violence that Mrs. Maze declared it would be a foolhardy risk of
his life for Gaites to go; and again she enforced her logic with Miss
Alber, whom she said she had asked to one-o'clock dinner, with a few
other friends.

Gaites stayed, of course, but he atoned for his weakness by starting
early Tuesday morning, so as to get the first Hill Country train from
Boston at Burymouth. He had decided that to get in as much change of air
as possible he had better go to Craybrooks for the rest of his vacation.

His course lay through Lower Merritt, and perhaps he would have time to
run out from the train and ask the station-master (known to him from his
former sojourn) who Miss Phyllis Desmond was. His mind was not so full
of Miss June Alber but that he wished to know.

It was still raining heavily, and on the first cut beyond Porchester
Junction his train was stopped by a flagman, sent back from a
freight-train. There was a wash-out just ahead, and the way would be
blocked for several hours yet, if not longer. The express backed down to
Porchester, and there seemed no choice for Gaites, if he insisted upon
going to Craybrooks, but to take the first train up the old Boston and
Montreal line to Wells River and across by the Wing Road through
Fabyans; and this was what he did, arriving very late, but quite in time
for all he had to do at Craybrooks.

The next day the weather cleared up cold, after the storm, and the fat
old ladies, who outnumber everybody but the thin young girls at summer
hotels, made the landlord put the