se, Winifred found herself meekly doing as she was bid.

The last part of his advice was even better than the first, for it
occupied her mind, and also gave her the encouragement of feeling that
at each step she had lessened the distance between her and _terra
firma_ by one.

Flint felt the hand upon his shoulder tremble like a leaf; but he
never turned his head, only moved steadily onward and downward, with a
regularity and solidity which soon told upon Winifred's nervous
dizziness.

When she reached the ground, and stood once more in the sunlight of
the open doorway, she looked at him with a little tremulous smile. "A
hundred and seventeen!" she exclaimed. "I am sure I shall never
forget how many steps there are leading to the Bug Light."

"What a fool you are, Fred!" Jimmy remarked, with family frankness.

"I am," admitted Winifred. "No one knows it better than I, except,
perhaps, Mr. Flint."

"I know nothing of the kind," her companion answered with unwonted
cordiality. "Any one may be subject to a fit of dizziness, and to be
minus an arm under such circumstances makes the situation really
uncomfortable. We must try it again some day, to give you an
opportunity to prove to yourself that it was only an affair of the
moment."

"Dear me!" thought Winifred to herself, "why can't he always be nice
like that! He seems to be a queer kind of stratified rock; you never
know what you are going to strike next."

Aloud, she said, "I fancy, Jim, it must be past the White-House dinner
hour, and papa has grown worried and sent out scouts to look for you
and me. See, here is Ben Bradford!"

Looking down the road, Flint saw approaching them a tall, long-legged
youth whom he dimly remembered among the group on the porch of the
White-House the night before. His hair was parted in the middle, and
thickly pomaded to restrain its natural inclination towards curling.
His ears were large, and set on at right angles to his face. His nose
was Roman, and its prominence had rendered it peculiarly sensitive to
sunburn. His manners were too frank to be polished. As he joined them
now, he succeeded in making it evident at once that Flint's further
presence was entirely superfluous. This juvenile candor would have had
no effect, had not Winifred supplemented it by saying:--

"Mr. Bradford will take charge of me and my cape, Mr. Flint; I really
cannot consent to trouble you further."

Her manner was equivalent to a dismissal. Flint ha