, naturally enough, permitted him to walk home with her.

Mr. Flitcroft broke the silence, rushing into words with a derisive
laugh: "Yes, he's 'talked of' for Mayor--by the saloon people and the
niggers! I expect the Beaver Beach crowd would be for him, and if
tramps could vote he might--"

"What is Beaver Beach?" asked Ariel, not turning.

"What is Beaver Beach?" he repeated, and cast his eyes to the sky,
shaking his head awesomely. "It's a Place," he said, with abysmal
solemnity,--"a Place I shouldn't have mentioned in your presence, Miss
Tabor."

"What has it to do with Mr. Louden?"

The predestined Norbert conceived the present to be a heaven-sent
opportunity to enlighten her concerning Joe's character, since the
Pikes appeared to have been derelict in the performance of this
kindness.

"He goes there!" he proceeded heavily. "He lived there for a while
when he first came back from running away, and he's a friend of Mike
Sheehan's that runs it; he's a friend of all the riff-raff that hang
around there."

"How do you know he goes there?"

"Why, it was in the paper the day after he came back!" He appealed for
corroboration. "Wasn't it, Eugene?"

"No, no!" she persisted. "Newspapers are sometimes mistaken, aren't
they?" Laughing a little, she swept across the bulbous face beside her
a swift regard that was like a search-light. "How do you KNOW, Mr.
Flitcroft," she went on very rapidly, raising her voice,--"how do you
KNOW that Mr. Louden is familiar with this place? The newspapers may
have been falsely informed; you must admit that? Then how do you KNOW?
Have you ever MET any one who has seen him there?"

"I've seen him there myself!" The words skipped out of Norbert's mouth
like so many little devils, the instant he opened it. She had spoken
so quickly and with such vehemence, looking him full in the eye, that
he had forgotten everything in the world except making the point to
which her insistence had led him.

Mamie looked horrified; there was a sound of smothered laughter, and
Norbert, overwhelmed by the treachery of his own mouth, sat gasping.

"It can't be such a terrific place, then, after all," said Ariel,
gently, and turning to Eugene, "Have you ever been there, Mr. Bantry?"
she asked.

He changed color, but answered with enough glibness: "No."

Several of the young men rose; the wretched Flitcroft, however, evading
Mamie's eye--in which there was a distinct hint,--sat where he wa