It was a queer trick. Despite the many times Hertha had seen it, she was
never quite sure at what moment the top, spinning at a marvelous pace,
was caught up by the spinner to disappear in his pocket. And if she felt
the illusion, despite her familiarity with it, there was no question but
that Bob in the dim light, looking for the miraculous, found it. He
regarded Tom as a magician and only hoped for some new manifestation of
his power when he straightened himself up and stood before them.

"I must go now," he said.

He looked up at Hertha who stood on the step above him.

"Tom," she said, trying to delay him, "do you go to church?"

"Of course!"

"To Siloam?"

"How'd you guess that?"

"It's the biggest church in town."

Tom smiled. "I reckon you know'd I wouldn't go to any but a big one
while I was about it."

"And when you write home tell them all about me, won't you?"

"Yes."

"And we won't lose track of one another again."

He did not reply to this, but with a smile for her and a nod to Bob,
walked with his slow, steady gait down the street. Hertha stood by her
doorstep fearing to go farther, but Bob tore after his hero and with
short, trotting steps that sometimes became a run, accompanied him to
the street car, watching as he was carried away out of his sight.

When he came back he found Hertha standing just where he had left her.

"Say, Miss Ogilvie," he questioned, "is it staying in the woods so much
makes him black?"

"Why do you ask!" Hertha said sharply; "don't you like him the way he
is?"

"Oh, I don't care," Bob replied in a catholic spirit; and added
meditatively: "In the Arabian Nights all the genii are black."

CHAPTER XXIX

There are some who make decisions with the sure swiftness of a sensitive
film, one moment a blank, the next, by a flash of light, a picture,
incisive and clear. Such people, though they may make their share of
mistakes, lead on the whole a comfortable existence. But there are
others who, like the southern girl occupying the second-story back-room
of Mrs. Pickens' boarding-house, find it difficult to determine for
themselves the course which they shall take. And to these who wander in
the valley of indecision the right path to follow becomes daily more
obscured. The more they question the more they are beset with obstacles,
mists gather about them, and some have been known to wait in hesitancy,
until, without having tasted of adventure, they find that th