habitable, but for the
present its demands were too many. He closed the windows again and
abandoned the room to its musty solitude. From the spare room upstairs
he brought bed and bedding and placed it in the sitting room. It
required some ingenuity to convert the latter apartment into a bedroom,
but the difficulty was at last solved by relegating the sewing machine
to the parlor and moving the couch. When the bed was made Wade went out
to the kitchen and looked over the situation there. Closet and
cup-board displayed more dishes and utensils than he would have known
what to do with. He tried the pump and after a moment's vigorous work
was rewarded with a rushing stream of ice-cold water that tasted pure
and fresh. Then he looked for fuel. The lean-to shed, built behind the
kitchen, was locked, and, after a fruitless search for the key, he pried
off the hasp with a screw-driver. The shed held the accumulated rubbish
of many years, but Wade didn't examine it. Fuel was what he wanted and
he found plenty of it. There was a pile of old shingles and several feet
of maple and hickory neatly stowed against the back wall. Near at hand
was a chopping-block, the axe still leaning against it. There was a
saw-horse, too, and a saw hung above it on a nail. But there was no wood
cut in stove size, and so Wade swung the door wide open to let in light,
and set to work with the saw and axe. It felt good to get his muscles
into play again and he was soon whistling merrily. Fifteen minutes later
he was building a fire in the kitchen stove. It was too early for
supper, but the iron kettle looked very lonely without any steam curling
from its impertinent spout. After he had solved the secrets of the
perplexing drafts, and ascertained by the simple expedient of placing a
sooty finger in it that the water was really getting warm, he washed his
hands at the sink and returned to the sitting-room to don vest and coat.
He had done that and was ruminantly filling his pipe when something drew
his gaze to one of the side windows. The pipe fell to the floor and the
tobacco trailed across the carpet.

For a moment, for just the tiny space of time which it took his heart to
charge madly up into his throat, turn over and race back again, the open
casement framed the shoulders and face of a woman. There were greens and
blues in the background, and sunlight everywhere, and a blue shadow fell
athwart the sill. The picture glared with light and color, but f