paper--and hid the
truth when he came in!"

Pocket looked up at last.

"I know the truth."

"About the arrest?"

"Yes; it was quite obvious, and he admitted it when you'd gone."

"Why not before?"

"I couldn't tax him about it in front of you," he muttered, looking up and
down quickly, unable to face her fierce excitement.

"Do tell me what it is you both know about this dreadful case!"

"I can't," the boy said hoarsely; "don't ask me."

"Then you know who did it. I can see you do."

There was a new anguish even in her whisper; he could hear what she
thought.

"It was nobody you care about," he mumbled, hoarser than before, and his
head lower.

"You don't mean----"

She stopped aghast.

"I can't say another word--and you won't say another to me!" he added, a
bitter break in his muffled voice. He longed to tell her it had been an
accident, to tell her all; but he had given his word to Baumgartner not to
confide in her, and he did not think that he had broken it yet.

"You don't know me," she whispered, and for a moment her hand lay warm in
his; "trust me! I'm your friend in spite of all you've said--or done!"

Dr. Baumgartner might have been ten minutes getting rid of the intruder;
before that he had been first amazed and then relieved to hear the piano
in the drawing-room; and that was all his anxious ear had heard of either
boy or girl during his absence. Yet the boy was not standing over the
piano, as he might have been, for Phillida was trying to recall one of the
concert songs he said his sister sang. Pocket, however, was staring out
into the garden with a troubled face, which he turned abruptly,
aggressively, and yet apprehensively to meet the doctor's.

But the doctor no longer looked suspiciously from him to Phillida, but
stood beaming on them both, and rubbing his hands as though he had done
something very clever indeed.

BEFORE THE STORM

Sunday in London has got itself a bad name among those who occasionally
spend one at their hotel, and miss the band, their letters, and the
theatre at night; but at Dr. Baumgartner's there was little to distinguish
the seventh day from the other six. The passover of the postman, that
boon to residents and grievance of the traveller, was a normal condition
in the dingy house of no address. More motor-horns were heard in the
distance, and less heavy traffic; the sound of church bells came as well
through the open windows; then the street-