uch
great things, when, after some warning enthusiasm, he disappeared."

"Ran away?" asked Hazel.

"Well, we thought at first he was drowned, for he used to sit for hours
on the beach talking to fishermen. But I never thought he had met with
any such misfortune. Leland is one of the individuals born to live. He
is too healthy, too splendid, a chap to up and die. Of course, mother
thought he must be dead, or he would not keep her in anxiety, but that is
the way these reformer minds usually work--spare your own and lose the
cause."

"And what did happen?" asked Betty, all interested.

"I happened to find him. There he lay, with his wonderful blond hair
burned in ugly spots, and his baby complexion almost----"

"Oh! are all his good looks gone?" gasped Belle--she who always stood up
for the beautiful in everything, even in young men.

"I hope not gone forever," said the doctor, "but, indeed, poor boy, he
had a narrow escape."

"But whatever took him into the kitchen?" asked Bess.

"He went down there among the foreigners to study actual conditions. Did
you ever hear of anything so idiotic? But that is his hobby. He has
been into all kinds of labor during these three long, sorrowful years."

"And you were helping your own brother! And we--blamed you!" It was
Belle who spoke.

"I could not blame you for so doing. I had been enjoined to secrecy the
very moment poor Leland laid his eyes on me. He begged me not even to
send word to mother, as he said it would spoil the research of an entire
year if he had to stop his work before the summer was entirely over."

"But he could not work--he is ill?" said Bess.

"Still, you see, he could keep among the men he had classed himself with,
and that is his idea of duty. I let mother know I had found him in spite
of his 'ideas,' but I did not tell her much more."

"Will he not go home with you?" asked Hazel.

"He has promised to give up cooking by October first. Then I am going to
collect him."

"What an interesting young man he must be," remarked Belle, to whom the
story had already brought some brightness.

"Oh, indeed he is," declared Miss Robbins. "He is younger than I, and
when I went to college he promised to do all sorts of stunts to prove my
problems. He even wanted to try living, or dying, on one sort of food;
wanted to remain up without sleeping until he fell over; wanted to sleep
in dark cellars to see what effect that would have; in fact, I th