we started skallyhootin' fer th'
roof--room an' all!"

Frank fell back, relieved, and trying not to show amusement.

"That was the elevator," he explained. "A machine to carry you upstairs
and save you the work of climbing."

"Dellaw!" exclaimed the girl, not yet entirely calm. "As if I couldn't
walk! Thought we was blowed up by another dynamighty bomb!"

Miss Alathea entered hurriedly, looking about the room, in evident
distress. At sight of Madge she gave a great sigh of relief. "My dear,
I'm so sorry you were frightened!"

The girl laughed nervously, pulling herself together. "I understand,
now, Miss 'Lethe, and I'm as cool as a cucumber."

There was a group of darkies at the door, and, suddenly, they all began
to grin. Miss 'Lethe knew the sign.

"The Colonel's coming," she said positively. "Their faces show it. Look
at them?"

Her guess proved a true prophecy. The Colonel, plainly busy with
absorbing thoughts, was striding along the uneven old brick sidewalk,
seeing nothing, hearing nothing, when the crowd of darkies, sure of his
good-nature, beneficiaries from past favors, many times, surrounded him,
beseeching him for tips upon the coming races. Very different were these
city darkies from the respectful negroes of the Kentucky plantations of
the time. They swarmed about him in an insistent horde.

"Who gwine win dat race, Marse Cunnel? Who gwine win dat race?" they
chorussed.

He stopped and beamed at them good-naturedly.

"Who's going to win?" said he. "Queen Bess, of course."

He joined the group, inside, with a bundle in one hand and an open
telegram in the other. "Good morning, ladies. Miss 'Lethe, you're
looking fresh and blooming as you used to twenty years ago." He tried to
catch himself, but failed. "As fresh and blooming," he corrected, "as
usual, Miss 'Lethe." His bow was very courtly and her own no less so.

"Frank, my boy," said he, turning to the youthful owner of Queen Bess,
"I've got their answer, and it's all right."

Frank had been acutely worried. There had been some question of the sale
of the mare to the Dyer Brothers before the fire; now that this disaster
had occurred and stories had been started, as, of course, he knew they
must have been, about injuries to her, there might be, he had feared,
good reason to expect the celebrated horsemen to withdraw their
proposition. The Colonel's news, therefore, was very welcome.

"They take the mare?" he asked, all eagerness."

"N-o