atisfied with
nothing short of perfection, let's go up-stairs, Sophy, and decide
where we shall sleep to-night."

We chose the front room because of a gate-legged table that Alicia
wanted to say her prayers beside, and because of the particularly
fine portrait of a colonial gentleman above the mantel, a very
handsome man in claret-colored satin, with a vest of flowered gold
brocade, a gold-hilted sword upon which his fine fingers rested, and
a pair of silk-stockinged legs of which he seemed complacently
aware.

"I wish you weren't dead," Alicia told him regretfully. "Your taste
in clothes is above all praise, though I fancy you were somewhat too
vain of your legs, sir. I never knew before that men had legs like
that, did you, Sophy?"

"I take no pleasure in the legs of a man." I quoted the Psalmist
acridly enough.

"Don't pay any attention to Sophy," Alicia advised the portrait,
naughtily. "Just to prove how much we both admire you, you shall
have Ariel's roses." She had brought them up-stairs with us, and now
she walked over to the mantel to place them beneath the picture.

"Why!" exclaimed Alicia, "why!" and she held up nothing more
remarkable than a package of cigarettes, evidently left there
recently, for it was not dusty.

"I dare say Judge Gatchell forgot it, when he was looking over the
house. That reminds me: the silver you admired so much was marked
'G.' Then, in all probability, Judge Gatchell sent us that spread,
and very thoughtful it was of him, I must say."

"Rheumatic old judges don't smoke superfine cigarettes, Sophy, nor
send black tray-bearers in terra-cotta robes out on rainy days for
the entertainment of strange ladies. No: this is something, or
somebody, _young_. But since when did Ariel take to tobacco?"

"Let's go down-stairs," I suggested, "and wait for that old darky,
if he is a real darky and ever means to return." I did not fancy
those big forlorn rooms, with their great beds that didn't seem made
for people to sleep and dream in, but to stay awake and worry over
their sins--and then die in.

The down-stairs halls had grown darker, and the rain came down in a
gray sheet, so that the open window seemed a hole cut into it. The
tray we had left on the window-ledge was gone. In its place was
nothing more romantic than a freshly filled and trimmed kerosene
lamp, two candles, and a box of matches.

When our Jehu finally returned he rummaged out some firewood from
the sooty kitchen and