door, hoping to get some more definite news of the calamity
which had stirred the village, but he was gone before she could reach
the front hall.

He had not thought of his better clothes; there might still be work to
do, and his Chief might again need his services. Ruth would understand,
he said to himself--all of which was true. Indeed, she liked him better
in his high-water rubber boots, wide slouch hat and tarpaulins than in
the more conventional suit of immaculate black with which he clothed his
shapely body whenever he took her to one of the big dinners at one of
the great houses on Washington Square.

And she liked this suit best of all. She had been peeping through the
curtains and her critical admiring eyes had missed no detail. She
saw that the cavalier boots were gone, but she recognized the short
pea-jacket and the loose rolling collar of the soft flannel shirt
circling the strong, bronzed throat, and the dash of red in the silken
scarf.

And so it is not surprising that when he got within sight of her
windows, his cheeks aflame with the crisp air, his eyes snapping with
the joy of once more hearing her voice, her heart should have throbbed
with an undefinable happiness and pride as she realized that for a time,
at least, he was to be all her own. And yet when he had again taken her
hand--the warmth of his last pressure still lingered in her palm--and
had looked into her eyes and had said how he hoped he had not kept her
waiting, all she could answer in reply was the non-committal remark:

"Well, now you look something like"--at which Jack's heart gave a great
bound, any compliment, however slight, being so much manna to his hungry
soul; Ruth adding, as she led the way into the sitting-room, "I lighted
the wood fire because I was afraid you might still be cold."

And ten minutes had been enough for Ruth.

It had been one of those lightning changes which a pretty girl can
always make when her lover is expected any instant and she does not want
to lose a moment of his time, but it had sufficed. Something soft and
clinging it was now; her lovely, rounded figure moving in its folds as
a mermaid moves in the surf; her hair shaken cut and caught up again in
all its delicious abandon; her cheeks, lips, throat, rose-color in the
joy of her expectancy.

He sat drinking it all in. Had a mass of outdoor roses been laid by
his side, their fragrance filling the air, the beauty of their coloring
entrancing his so