they escaped a passing cloud that she was
startled. She arose at once and was surprised to find, in the hollow
below, that the paths were crusted and the electric lights gleamed
yellow through a fluttering mist of flying snow. It was very beautiful,
but it warned one to hasten, and besides it had grown quite dark.

There was a path, Priscilla knew it well, that led straight across the
park to an entrance near Boswell's home, and she took it now at a rapid
pace.

The beauty of the walk did not escape her, the exhilaration of the air
acted like a cordial upon her, she seemed hardly to touch the ground as
she ran on; and once she paused before setting her foot upon the lovely
whiteness. As she hesitated some one stepped from the shadow of a clump
of bushes and confronted her under the electric light.

"Can you tell me how to find the nearest way out? I'm lost."

Priscilla's heart gave one hard throb and stood still, it seemed for an
hour, while an almost forgotten terror seized and held her. She was
looking full upon Jerry-Jo McAlpin! A soiled and haggard shadow he was
of what he once had been, but it was Jerry-Jo and no other.

"I--I did not mean to frighten you. Forgive me. I ain't going to hurt
you, Miss. I----"

But Priscilla was gone before the sentence was finished. Gone before she
knew whether the speaker had recognized her or not. Gone before--and then
she stood still. She could not leave him to wander alone at night in that
big, strange place. No matter what happened, she must treat him humanly,
she, who knew the danger. She went back, her blood running like ice
through her body; but Jerry-Jo McAlpin was not there. Priscilla waited,
and once she spoke vague directions to the empty space, but no answering
voice replied. Presently she controlled herself, and took to the path
again, and reached John Boswell's house before he had left his window.

She did not tell of the encounter; she felt she must wait, but in her
heart she knew that Jerry-Jo McAlpin was as surely on her trail as she
was herself. Such things as that meeting did not happen to them of the
In-Place unless for a purpose.

She had a wonderful evening with Boswell. They did not go out, and after
dinner he read her some manuscript stories. Boswell had never before so
intimately permitted her to come close to his work. She had seen stories
of his in print, had heard plans for others, but before the fire in his
study that night he read, among other