rner of the table.

"If you should get home before I do," it ran, "this is to tell you that
I have gone to Mr. Fulton's with those papers I promised to take right
after luncheon--I forgot all about them till just now. I'll be back in
three-quarters of an hour sure; it's half-past five now. Supper's all
ready now but making the coffee. Be sure and wait."

He smoothed the hurried scrawl out tenderly, feeling as if something
hard and cold in his left side had melted with a sudden gush of warmth.
Back in three-quarters of an hour! He laughed aloud at the sanguineness
of it. Why, it took _him_ forty minutes to go to Mr. Fulton's and back!
And the idea of telling him to be sure and wait! The little goose! Did
she think he would take himself off in a temper at not finding her, as
he had once months ago? He went out to the kitchen to put his flowers
in water, and to finish slicing an egg over the top of the bowl of salad
there--Gertrude had evidently just begun to do it when the package
outside the window caught her eye. He put on some water for the coffee,
and brought in an armful of wood; then he strolled to the gate to wait
for his wife. The neighbor's two-year-old baby came staggering down the
walk in front of the house. Allison caught up the child in his arms, and
lifted it to the top of the gate-post, beside him. This was the little
girl for whom Gertrude had been making a dress the other day; she had
looked very shocked--Gertrude--when he had asked her if she proposed to
make clothes for all the dirty little brats in the neighborhood, and had
told him with some dignity that Dolly was a very pretty baby, and was
kept as clean as could be expected. Dolly _was_ a pretty baby. He
tightened the arm that was about her a little, and began to talk clumsy
baby-talk to her; her mother looked on with a pleased smile from her
front door. The sun was setting, and a strange bright peace was on
everything.

Suddenly Allison's eyes were caught by an unaccustomed sight--a crowd of
people, men, women, and children, advancing down the road, slowly,
steadily, and silently--very silently. He surveyed them curiously,
ignorantly. Suddenly a man spoke to the one next him--Allison saw the
dip of his head--and almost at the same instant a child--a
twelve-year-old girl--put up her hands to shade her eyes, staring
intently at Allison, and then with a loud shriek ran wildly, blindly, in
the other direction. And then Allison knew that this silent c