w weird notes, which were so lovely that they seemed the
sounds from which the melody of all the world was sprung. "I'll call twice,
and then you answer if you are awake. If not, I'll call again."

"I'll be awake," I asserted positively. "Won't you--that is, must I fix--"

"That's all for to-night, and good night," he answered me with a laugh that
was as reedy as the brisk wind in the trees. In a second he was padding
away from me into the trees beyond the garden as swiftly as I suppose
jaguars and lithe lions travel.

"Oh, don't you want some supper?" I called into the moonlight, even
running a few steps after him.

"Parched corn in my pocket--lambs," came fluting back to me from the
shadows.

"Supper am sarved, little Mis'," Rufus announced from the hack door, as I
stood still looking and listening into the night.

"Uncle Cradd," I asked eagerly at the end of the food prayer that the old
gentleman had offered after seating me with ceremony behind a steaming
silver coffee urn of colonial pattern, of which I had heard all my life,
"who is that remarkable man?"

CHAPTER III

"Si Beesley? Spare rib, dear?" was his disappointing but hospitable, answer
in two return questions to my anxious inquiries about the Pan who had come
out of the woods at my need.

"No; I mean--mean, didn't you call him Adam?"

"Nobody knows. Now, William, a spare rib and a muffin is real nourishment
after the nightingale's tongues and snails you've been living on for
twenty-odd years, isn't it?" As he spoke Uncle Cradd beamed on father, who
was eating with the first show of real pleasure in food since we had had to
send Henri back to New York, after the crash, weeping with all his
French-cook soul at leaving us after fifteen years' service.

"I have always enjoyed that essay of Charles Lamb's on roast pig, Cradd,"
answered father as he took a second muffin. "I know that Lamb used to bore
you, Cradd, but honestly now, doesn't his materialism seem--"

"Oh, Uncle Cradd, please tell me about that Adam man before you and father
disappear into the eighteenth century," I pleaded, as I handed two cups of
steaming coffee to Rufus to pass my two elderly savants.

"There is nothing to tell, Nancy child," answered Uncle Cradd, with an
indulgent smile as he peered at me over his glasses. "Upon my word,
William, Nancy is the living image of mother when we first remember her,
isn't she? You are very beautiful, my dear."

"I know it," I answ