t your mother's--Joe."

"What about it? Were you teasing Joe?"

"No, it was you I was after."

"Well? Did you get me?"

Hedrick made another somewhat ghastly pretence of mirth. "Well, I
guess I've had about all the fun out of it I'm going to. Might as
well tell you. It was that book of Laura's you thought she sent
you."

Richard stopped short; whereupon Hedrick turned clumsily, and
began to stalk back in the direction from which they had come.

"That book--I thought she--sent me?" Lindley repeated, stammering.

"She never sent it," called the boy, continuing to walk away. "She
kept it hid, and I found it. I faked her into writing your name on
a sheet of paper, and made you think she'd sent the old thing to
you. I just did it for a joke on you."

With too retching an effort to simulate another burst of
merriment, he caught the stump of his right stilt in a pavement
crack, wavered, cut in the air a figure like a geometrical
proposition gone mad, and came whacking to earth in magnificent
disaster.

Richard took him to Mrs. Lindley for repairs. She kept him until
dark: Hedrick was bandaged, led, lemonaded and blandished.

Never in his life had he known such a listener.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

That was a long night for Cora Madison, and the morning found her
yellow. She made a poor breakfast, and returned from the table to
her own room, but after a time descended restlessly and wandered
from one room to another, staring out of the windows. Laura had
gone out; Mrs. Madison was with her husband, whom she seldom left;
Hedrick had departed ostensibly for school; and the house was as
still as a farm in winter--an intolerable condition of things for
an effervescent young woman whose diet was excitement. Cora,
drumming with her fingers upon a window in the owl-haunted cell,
made noises with her throat, her breath and her lips not
unsuggestive of a sputtering fuse. She was heavily charged.

"Now what in thunder do _you_ want?" she inquired of an elderly
man who turned in from the sidewalk and with serious steps
approached the house.

Pryor, having rung, found himself confronted with the lady he had
come to seek. Ensued the moment of strangers meeting: invisible
antennae extended and touched;--at the contact, Cora's drew in,
and she looked upon him without graciousness.

"I just called," he said placatively, smiling as if some humour
lurked in his intention, "to ask how your father is. I heard
downtown he wasn'