unately their progress overhead would not
be impeded by a press of vehicles.)

"That's where we live--Brooklyn," she said.

"Is it? Got a nice house?" He had practically asked this question
before; but he hardly knew what he was saying. A policeman had stopped
the "taxi" and was shaking his head, as at a rather "fishy" story. Mr.
Heatherbloom by a species of telepathy, seemed to overhear the excited
talk waging below.

"Oh, yes; lovely!" Jane's accents were but parenthetical to something
else. The "taxi" had been allowed to proceed, in spite of the detaining
thought-waves Mr. Heatherbloom had launched toward the officer of the
law. The occupant had probably showed a badge; Mr. Heatherbloom
stretched his neck out of the window.

"You can come around and see, sometime, if you want to." Pride in her
voice. "And meet my husband." Husband was a very substantial baker.

"Charmed, I'm sure! Ha! ha!" He suddenly laughed.

"What is it?" She looked startled.

"Funniest accident!" He waved his hat, as at some one, out of the
window. "See that taxi! Bumped into a dray. Ha! ha!"

"I don't see anything so funny in that." Straightening.

"No? You should have seen the expression on his face--"

"His? Whose?"

"The--ah, drayman's, of course! He--looked so mad."

"I should have thought," she observed, "the man in the car would have
been the maddest It couldn't have hurt the dray much."

"No? Perhaps that's what made it seem so funny to me."

"Well," she said, "I never noticed before that you had a great sense of
humor."

"You never knew me." Jauntily.

They got off at Brooklyn Bridge together. As they made their way through
the crowd, Mr. Heatherbloom appeared most care-free and very sedulous of
his companion's welfare, especially when they passed one or two
loiterers who seemed eying the passengers rather closely.

"Two for Brooklyn." Mr. Heatherbloom laid down a dime at the ticket
office.

Soon, unmolested, he sped on once more; but as they crossed the busy
river all his light-heartedness seemed suddenly to desert him; the
questions he had been vainly asking himself earlier that day were
reiterated in his brain. Where was she? What had become of her? His
hands clasped closely. A red spot burned on his cheek.

CHAPTER X

A NEW-FOUND THEORY

"No; the prince isn't coming back to America, and she--Miss
Dalrymple--isn't going to marry him!"

Jane's voice, running on rather at random, suddenly with unusua