e lee roy!"

"Hedrick, won't you please run along? I want to change my dress."

"What for? There was company for dinner and you didn't change
then."

Laura's flushed cheeks flushed deeper, and in her confusion she
answered too quickly. "I only have one evening gown. I--of course
I can't wear it every night."

"Well, then," he returned triumphantly, "what do you want to put
it on now for?"

"_Please_ run along, Hedrick," she pleaded.

"You didn't for this Corliss," he persisted sharply. "You know
Dick Lindley couldn't see anybody but Cora to save his life, and I
don't suppose there's a girl on earth fool enough to dress up for
that Wade Trum----"

"Hedrick!" Laura's voice rang with a warning which he remembered
to have heard upon a few previous occasions when she had easily
proved herself physically stronger than he. "Go and tell mother
I'm coming," she said.

He began to whistle "Beulah Land" as he went, but, with the swift
closing of the door behind him, abandoned that pathetically
optimistic hymn prematurely, after the third bar.

Twenty minutes later, when Laura came out and went downstairs, a
fine straight figure in her black evening gown, the Sieur de
Marsac--that hard-bitten Huguenot, whose middle-aged shabbiness
was but the outward and deceptive seeming of the longest head and
the best sword in France--emerged cautiously from the passageway
and stood listening until her footsteps were heard descending the
front stairs. Nevertheless, the most painstaking search of her
room, a search as systematic as it was feverish, failed to reveal
where she had hidden the book.

He returned wearily to the porch.

A prophet has always been supposed to take some pleasure, perhaps
morbid, in seeing his predictions fulfilled; and it may have been
a consolation to the gloomy heart of Hedrick, sorely injured by
Laura's offensive care of her treasure, to find the grouping upon
the porch as he had foretold: Cora and Mr. Corliss sitting a
little aloof from the others, far enough to permit their holding
an indistinct and murmurous conversation of their own. Their
sequestration, even by so short a distance, gave them an
appearance of intimacy which probably accounted for the rather
absent greeting bestowed by Mr. Lindley upon the son of the house,
who met him with some favour.

This Richard Lindley was a thin, friendly looking young man with a
pleasing, old-fashioned face which suggested that if he were
minded to be port