the senator, "and we are
going to see him."

"And don't tell him that you didn't come to ask after him yesterday,"
said Mrs. Brackett, defiantly, "because I said you did. I had my
reasons," she went on, "and you can say I said so."

Margaret ran up-stairs to get her hat. She was almost wild with
excitement and foreboding of she knew not what.

The letter which she had been writing fell from her hand. She picked it
up, looked hastily at the superscription, "Mr. Peter Manners, Jr.," and
tore it into pieces.

IX

There is no doubt that Aladdin's recovery dated from Margaret's visit.
The poor boy was too sick to say what he had planned, but Margaret
sat by his bed for a while and held his hand, and said little abrupt
conventional things that meant much more to them both, and that was
enough. Besides, and under the guns of her father's eyes, just before
she went away she stooped and kissed him on the forehead, and that was
more than enough to make anybody get over anything, Aladdin thought.
So he slept a long cool sleep after Margaret had gone, and woke free of
fever. As he lay gathering strength to sit up in bed, which treat had
been promised him in ten days, Aladdin's mind worked hard over the
future, and what he could machinate in order one day to be almost worthy
to kiss the dust under Margaret's feet. She sent him flowers twice, but
was not allowed to come and see him again.

Aladdin had awful struggles with the boredom of convalescence. He felt
perfectly well, and they wouldn't let him get up and out; everything
forbidden he wanted to eat. And his one solace was the Brackett library.
This was an extraordinary collection of books. They were seven, and how
they got there nobody knows. The most important in the collection was,
in Mrs. Brackett's estimation, an odd volume of an encyclopedia, bound
in tree-calf and labeled, "Safety-lamps to Stranglers." Next were four
fat tomes in the German language on scientific subjects; these, provided
that anybody had ever wanted to read them, had never succeeded
in getting themselves read, but they had cuts and cuts which were
fascinating to surmise about. The sixth book was the second volume of
a romance called "The Headsman," by "the author of 'The Spy,'" and the
seventh was a back-split edition of Poe's poems.

The second volume of "The Headsman" went like cakes and syrup on a cold
morning, for it was narrative, and then it was laid aside, because it
was dull. The