w off his cloak and felt hat, and
showed the grinning skull of a skeleton, while a bony arm tried to
seize her. She woke moaning with fright, to find Dulce's long hair
streaming over her face, and the birds singing in the sweet breezy
dawn; after which she fell into a dreamless, refreshing sleep.

Phillis had to submit to rather a severe reproof from her mother, in
return for her frankness. Mrs. Challoner's prudery was up in arms the
moment she heard of Mrs. Williams's lodger.

"Mrs. Williams ought to have come with you herself; but a strange man
at that time of night!--what would Mr. Drummond have said to you?"

"Whatever Mr. Drummond liked to say!" returned Phillis, pettishly, for
this was stroking her already ruffled feelings decidedly the wrong
way.

Phillis always turned captious whenever Mr. Drummond was mentioned;
but she subsided into meekness again when her mother fell to crying
and bemoaning her hard fate and her darlings' unprotected position.

"Oh, what would your dear father have said?" she cried, in such utter
misery of tone that Phillis began kissing her, and promising that she
would never, never be out so late again, and that on no account would
she walk up the Braidwood Road in the evening with a strange man who
wore an outlandish cloak and a felt hat that only wanted a feather to
remind her of Guy Fawkes, only Guy Fawkes did not wear blue
spectacles.

When Phillis had at last soothed her mother,--always a lengthy
process, for Mrs. Challoner, like other sensitive and feeble natures,
could only be quieted by much talk,--she fell to her work in vigorous
silence; but by a stroke of ill luck, Mr. Drummond chose to make
another pastoral visitation; and, to her secret chagrin, her mother at
once repeated the whole story.

"Mrs. Williams's lodger saw Miss Phillis home! Why, I did not know
Mrs. Williams had a lodger!" returned Mr. Drummond, in a perplexed
voice.

This made matters worse.

"I suppose Mrs. Williams is not bound to let the vicarage know
directly she lets her rooms?" observed Phillis, rather impatiently;
for she was vexed with her mother for repeating all this.

"No, of course not; but I was at Ivy Cottage myself yesterday, and
Mrs. Williams knows I always call on her lodgers, and she never
mentioned the fellow's existence to me."

"Fellow, indeed!" observed Phillis, _sotto voce_; for she had a vivid
remembrance of the stranger's commanding presence and pleasant voice.

"When did he