a detective will jump; they're worse'n cats."

"Oh!" cried Miss Ocky, and choked on a puff of smoke. "Eavesdropper!"
she gasped.

"I didn't go for to do it. But if you _will_ have these little
intimate chats on a piazza without looking around the corner--! Now,
you can tell me what it was all about."

"I'll tell you first that it's a mistake to take overheard remarks too
seriously." Miss Ocky, recovered from smoke and emotion, smiled at the
fire. "Once, when I was a little girl of seven, I got an awful scare
that way--right in this very room, on a wild stormy night like this! I
had come in to say good night to my father and mother, who were sitting
before a fire as we are now. Just as I left the room, I heard my
mother say to him, 'The old man is out to-night!' Unless you were a
nervous, high-strung brat yourself, you can't imagine the effect of
that on me. I crept off to bed shivering, and lay awake half the
night. Every time the wind shook my windows, I pictured some
monstrous, hoary-headed creature trying to get in and gobble me up!"
She laughed a little. "It gives me a grue to think of it even yet. I
discovered the explanation of the phrase the next day. Can you guess
it?"

"No. Another local legend, perhaps?"

"Nothing half so thrilling." She pointed to a high shelf above the
mantelpiece. "There is the answer!"

Creighton followed the direction of her finger and smiled. On the
shelf stood one of those miniature Swiss chalets so popular in
drawing-rooms a generation ago. Two little figurines, a young woman
and an old man, operating on barometric principles, emerged from the
front door in turn as the weather indications were fair or stormy. At
this moment the old man was well out.

"Enough to scare any child to death," he admitted. "Now--"

"But tame when explained, like lots of overheard things. Once when I
was staying with a Chinese family in Pekin--"

"Where did you get the idea," inquired Creighton mildly, "that I was
fond of red-herring? As a matter-of-fact, I've always hated it."

"Mmph!" said Miss Ocky, and made a face at him. "Well, what do you
want to know?"

"You are probably aware that I had a long talk with Bates this
afternoon. He told me much that was interesting--but I'd like _your_
version of that conversation which you felt shouldn't be repeated to
me."

"I wish I'd kept still about it," sighed Miss Ocky repentantly. "Now
you'll probably magnify it out of all