lie looked up at him in puzzled silence.

"Smile, just once, so I shall know I am forgiven," he said. "Will
you?"

The child smiled confusedly, caught the boy's eye, and smiled again,
most engagingly, at C. Bailey, Sr.'s, son.

"Oho!" exclaimed the senior Bailey laughingly and looking at his son,
"I'm forgiven for your sake, am I?"

"For heaven's sake, Clive," protested one of the gunners, "let the
little girl go and find her father. If I ever needed a drink it's
now!"

So Athalie went away to summon her father. She found him as she had
last noticed him, sitting asleep on the big leather office chair.
Ledlie, behind the desk, was still reading his soiled newspaper, which
he continued to do until Athalie cried out something in a frightened
voice. Then he laid aside his paper, blinked at her, got up leisurely
and shuffled over to where his partner was sitting dead on his leather
chair.

* * * * *

The duck-hunters left that night. One after another the four gentlemen
came over to speak to Athalie and to her sisters. There was some
confusion and crowding in the hallway, what with the doctor, the
undertaker's assistants, neighbours, and the New York duck-hunters.

Ledlie ventured to overcharge them on the bill. As nobody objected he
regretted his moderation. However, the taking off of Greensleeve
helped business in the bar where sooner or later everybody drifted.

When the four-seated livery wagon drove up to take the gunning party
to the train, the boy lingered behind the others and then hurried back
to where Athalie was standing, white-faced, tearless, staring at the
closed door of the room where they had taken her father.

Bailey Junior's touch on her arm made her turn: "I am sorry," he said.
"I hope you will not be very unhappy.... And--here is a Christmas
present--"

He took the dazed child's icy little hand in his, and, fumbling the
business rather awkwardly, he finally contrived to snap a strap-watch
over the delicate wrist. It was the one he had been wearing.

"Good-bye, Athalie," he murmured, very red.

The girl gazed at him out of her lovely confused eyes for a moment.
But when she tried to speak no sound came.

"Good-bye," he said again, choking slightly. "I'll surely, surely come
back to see you. Don't be unhappy. I'll come."

But it was many years before he returned to the Hotel Greensleeve.

CHAPTER IV

She was fifteen years old before she saw him ag