Wingfield is open to suggestion on that side, you
may bring him down, and I'll put him on the trail of a lot more of the
mysteries."

"Thank you so much. And may I call it my discovery?"

Again her obviousness touched the secret spring of laughter in him. It
was very evident that Miss Van Bryck would do anything in reason to
bring about a solution of continuity in the sympathetic intimacy growing
up between the pair on the opposite side of the table.

"It is yours, absolutely," he made haste to say. "I should never have
thought of the dramatic utility if you hadn't suggested it."

"H'm!--ha!" broke in the major. "What are you two young people plotting
about over there?"

Ballard turned the edge of the query; blunted it permanently by
attacking a piece of government engineering in which, as he happened to
know, the major had figured in an advisory capacity. This carrying of
the war into Africa brought on a battle technical which ran on unbroken
to the ices and beyond; to the moment when Colonel Craigmiles proposed
an adjournment to the portico for the coffee and the tobacco. Ballard
came off second-best, but he had accomplished his object, which was to
make the shrewd-eyed old major forget if he had overheard too much; and
Miss Van Bryck gave him his meed of praise.

"You are a very brave man, Mr. Ballard," she said, as he drew the
portieres aside for her. "Everybody else is afraid of the major."

"I've met him before," laughed the Kentuckian; "in one or another of his
various incarnations. And I didn't learn my trade at West Point, you
remember."

IX

THE BRINK OF HAZARD

The summer night was perfect, and the after-dinner gathering under the
great portico became rather a dispersal. The company fell apart into
couples and groups when the coffee was served; and while Miss Craigmiles
and the playwright were still fraying the worn threads of the dramatic
unities, Ballard consoled himself with the older of the Cantrell girls,
talking commonplace nothings until his heart ached.

Later on, when young Bigelow had relieved him, and he had given up all
hope of breaking into the dramatic duet, he rose to go and make his
parting acknowledgments to Miss Cauffrey and the colonel. It was at that
moment that Miss Elsa confronted him.

"You are not leaving?" she said. "The evening is still young--even for
country folk."

"Measuring by the hours I've been neglected, the evening is old, very
old," he retorted rep