ade the quick reply:

"Well, you may. If you can put up with such poor accommodations as I can
offer, it shall not be said I refused you what Mr. Monell is pleased to
call a favor."

And, complete in her reception as she had been in her resistance, she
gave us a pleasant smile, and, ignoring my thanks, bustled out with Mr.
Monell to the buggy, where she received my bag and what was, doubtless,
more to her taste, the compliments he was now more than ever ready to
bestow upon her.

"I will see that a room is got ready for you in a very short space of
time," she said, upon re-entering. "Meanwhile, make yourself at home
here; and if you wish to write, why I think you will find everything for
the purpose in these drawers." And wheeling up a table to the easy chair
in which I sat, she pointed to the small compartments beneath, with
an air of such manifest desire to have me make use of anything and
everything she had, that I found myself wondering over my position with
a sort of startled embarrassment that was not remote from shame.

"Thank you; I have materials of my own," said I, and hastened to open my
bag and bring out the writing-case, which I always carried with me.

"Then I will leave you," said she; and with a quick bend and a short,
hurried look out of the window, she hastily quitted the room.

I could hear her steps cross the hall, go up two or three stairs, pause,
go up the rest of the flight, pause again, and then pass on. I was left
on the first floor alone.

XXVIII. A WEIRD EXPERIENCE

"Flat burglary an ever was committed."
--Much Ado about Nothing.

THE first thing I did was to inspect with greater care the room in which
I sat.

It was a pleasant apartment, as I have already said; square, sunny, and
well furnished. On the floor was a crimson carpet, on the walls several
pictures, at the windows, cheerful curtains of white, tastefully
ornamented with ferns and autumn leaves; in one corner an old melodeon,
and in the centre of the room a table draped with a bright cloth, on
which were various little knick-knacks which, without being rich or
expensive, were both pretty and, to a certain extent, ornamental. But
it was not these things, which I had seen repeated in many other country
homes, that especially attracted my attention, or drew me forward in the
slow march which I now undertook around the room. It was the something
underlying all these, the evidences which I found, or sought to