ken off. But during that day she gathered together the
different Granville papers, and went carefully over the "want" columns.
Knowing the town as she did, she was enabled to eliminate the unlikely,
undesirable places. Thus by evening she was armed with a list of firms
and individuals requiring a stenographer. And in the morning she
sallied forth.

Her quest ended with the first place she sought. The fact of two
years' service with the biggest firm in Granville was ample
recommendation; in addition to which the office manager, it developed
in their conversation, had known her father in years gone by. So
before ten o'clock Miss Hazel Weir was entered on the pay-roll of a
furniture-manufacturing house. It was not a permanent position; one of
their girls had been taken ill and was likely to take up her duties
again in six weeks or two months. But that suited Hazel all the
better. She could put in the time usefully, and have a breathing spell
before her wedding.

At noon she telephoned Jack Barrow that she was at work again, and she
went straight from lunch to the office grind.

Three days went by. Hazel attended the concert with Jack the evening
of the day Mr. Andrew Bush received ostentatious burial. At ten the
next morning the telephone girl called her.

"Some one wants you on the phone, Miss Weir," she said.

Hazel took up the dangling receiver.

"Hello!"

"That you, Hazel?"

She recognized the voice, half guessing it would be he, since no one
but Jack Barrow would be likely to ring her up.

"Surely. Doesn't it sound like me?"

"Have you seen the morning papers?"

"No. What--"

"Look 'em over. Particularly the _Gazette_."

The harsh rattle of a receiver slammed back on its hook without even a
"good-by" from him struck her like a slap in the face. She hung up
slowly, and went back to her work. Never since their first meeting,
and they had not been exempt from lovers' quarrels, had Jack Barrow
ever spoken to her like that. Even through the telephone the resentful
note in his voice grated on her and mystified her.

Something in the papers lay at the bottom of it, but she could
comprehend nothing, absolutely nothing, she told herself hotly, that
should make Jack snarl at her like that. His very manner of conveying
the message was maddening, put her up in arms.

She was chained to her work--which, despite her agitation, she managed
to wade through without any radical errors--until noon.