h swift comprehension,
and there was a tear in them as he told in ten words of the message
that Forrest was dead.

They turned gay, Ruth's sturdy, charming shoulders shrugging like a
Frenchman's with the exhilaration of fast walking and keen air, while
her voice, light and cheerful, with graceful modulations and the
singer's freedom from twang, rejoiced:

"I'm so glad we came! I'm so glad we came! But I'm afraid of the wild
beasts I see in the woods there. They have no right to have twilight
so early. I know a big newspaper man who lives at Pompton, N. J., and
I'm going to ask him to write to the governor about it. The
legislature ought to pass a law that dusk sha'n't come till seven,
Saturday afternoons. Do you know how glad I am that you made me
come?... And how honored I am to have you tell me--Lieutenant
Haviland--and the very bad Carl that lived in Joralemon?"

"It's----I'm glad----Say, gee! we'll have to hurry like the dickens if
we're going to catch a ferry in time to get you home for dinner."

"I have an idea. I wonder if we dare----I have a friend, sort of a
distant cousin, who married her a husband at Winklehurst, on the
Palisades, not very far from the ferry. I wonder if we couldn't make
her invite us both for dinner? Of course, she'll want to know all
about you; but we'll be mysterious, and that will make it all the more
fun, don't you think? I do want to prolong our jaunt, you see."

"I can't think of anything I'd rather do. But do you dare impose a
perfectly strange man on her?"

"Oh yes, I know her so well that she's told me what kind of a tie her
husband had on when he proposed."

"Let's do it!"

"A telephone! There's some shops ahead there, in that settlement.
Ought to be a telephone there.... I'll make her give us a good dinner!
If Laura thinks she'll get away with hash and a custard with a red
cherry in it, she'd better undeceive herself."

They entered a tiny wayside shop for the sale of candy and padlocks
and mittens. While Ruth telephoned to her friend, Mrs. Laura Needham,
Carl bought red-and-blue and lemon-colored all-day suckers, and a
sugar mouse, and a candy kitten with green ears and real whiskers. He
could not but hear Ruth telephoning, and they grinned at each other
like conspirators, her eyelids in little wrinkles as she tried to look
wicked, her voice amazingly innocent as she talked, Carl carefully
arraying his purchases before her, making the candy kitten pursue the
sugar mou