. No, I'm sorry. I
never knew two dandier people than you and your brother, and I like the
work, but--!"

He drew a long breath on the last word, and Miss Chisholm sighed, too.

"I'm sorry," she said, staring at the big seal ring on her finger. "I
tell you frankly that I think you're making a mistake. I don't argue
for Alan's sake or mine, though we both like you thoroughly, and your
being here would make a big difference this winter. But I think you've
made a good start with the company, and it's a good company, and I
think, from what you've said to-day, and other hints you're given me,
that you'd make your mother very happy by writing her that you think
you've struck your groove. However!"

She got up, brushed the leaves from her skirt, and went to her horse.
They rode home through the columned aisles of the forest almost
silently. The rough, straight trunks of the redwoods rose all about
them, catching gold and red on their thick, fibrous bark from the
setting sun. The horses' feet made no sound on the corduroy roadway.

For several days nothing more was said of Paul's going or staying. Miss
Chisholm went her usual busy round. Paul wrote his letter of
resignation and carried it to the dinner-table one night, hoping to
read it later to her, and win her approval of its finely rounded
sentences.

But a heavy mail came down the trail that evening, brought by the
obliging doctor from Emville, who had been summoned to dress the wounds
of one of the line-men who had got too close to the murderous "sixty
thousand" and had been badly burned by "the juice." And after the
letters were read, and the good doctor had made his patient
comfortable, he proved an excellent fourth hand at the game of bridge
for which they were always hungering.

So at one o'clock Paul went upstairs with his letter still unapproved.
He hesitated in the dim upper hallway, wondering if Patricia, who had
left the men to beer and crackers half an hour earlier, had retired, or
was, by happy chance, still gossiping with Mrs. Tolley or Min. While he
loitered in the hall, the door of her room swung slowly open.

Paul had often been in this room, which was merely a kind of adjunct to
the sleeping-porch beyond. He went to the doorway and said, "Patricia!"

The room, wide and charmingly furnished, was quite empty. On the deep
couch letters were scattered in a wide circle, and in their midst was
an indentation as if some one had been kneeling on the floor