the next minute seemed to have forgotten all about her, took her place
in the single chair before an extemporized table. Barker stood behind
her, and the hermit leaned against the fireplace. Miss Portfire's
appetite did not come up to her protestations. For the first time in
seven years it occurred to the hermit that his ordinary victual might be
improved. He stammered out something to that effect.

"I have eaten better, and worse," said Miss Portfire, quietly.

"But I thought you--that is, you said--"

"I spent a year in the hospitals, when father was on the Potomac,"
returned Miss Portfire, composedly. After a pause she continued: "You
remember after the second Bull Run--But, dear me! I beg your pardon; of
course, you know nothing about the war and all that sort of thing, and
don't care." (She put up her eye-glass and quietly surveyed his broad
muscular figure against the chimney.) "Or, perhaps, your prejudices--But
then, as a hermit you know you have no politics, of course. Please don't
let me bore you."

To have been strictly consistent, the hermit should have exhibited no
interest in this topic. Perhaps it was owing to some quality in the
narrator, but he was constrained to beg her to continue in such phrases
as his unfamiliar lips could command. So that, little by little, Miss
Portfire yielded up incident and personal observation of the contest
then raging; with the same half-abstracted, half-unconcerned air that
seemed habitual to her, she told the stories of privation, of suffering,
of endurance, and of sacrifice. With the same assumption of timid
deference that concealed her great self-control, she talked of
principles and rights. Apparently without enthusiasm and without effort,
of which his morbid nature would have been suspicious, she sang the
great American Iliad in a way that stirred the depths of her solitary
auditor to its massive foundations. Then she stopped and asked quietly,
"Where is Bob?"

The hermit started. He would look for her. But Bob, for some reason,
was not forthcoming. Search was made within and without the hut, but in
vain. For the first time that evening Miss Portfire showed some anxiety.
"Go," she said to Barker, "and find her. She MUST be found; stay, give
me your overcoat, I'll go myself." She threw the overcoat over her
shoulders and stepped out into the night. In the thick veil of fog that
seemed suddenly to inwrap her, she stood for a moment irresolute, and
then walked toward