elopement. If the unreasonableness of parents and
grandparents should crowd them too far, they had always as a last
resort, the solution of their problem by way of a runaway marriage. And
now Captain Zelotes was asking him to give up this last resort.

The captain, watching him keenly, divined what was in his grandson's
mind.

"Think it over, Al," he said kindly. "Don't answer me now, but think it
over, and to-morrow mornin' tell me how you feel about it." He hesitated
a moment and then added: "You know your grandmother and I, we--well,
we have maybe cause to be a little mite prejudiced against this elopin'
business."

So Albert thought, and the next morning, as the pair were walking
together to the office, he spoke his thought. Captain Zelotes had not
mentioned the subject.

"Grandfather," said Albert, with some embarrassment, "I'm going to give
you that promise."

His grandfather, who had been striding along, his heavy brows drawn
together and his glance fixed upon the frozen ground beneath his feet,
looked up.

"Eh?" he queried, uncomprehendingly.

"You asked me last night to promise you something, you know. . . .
You asked me to think it over. I have, and I'm going to promise you
that--Madeline and I won't marry without first telling you."

Captain Zelotes stopped in his stride; then he walked on again.

"Thank you, Al," he said quietly. "I hoped you'd see it that way."

"Yes--yes, I--I do. I don't want to bring any more--trouble of that kind
to you and Grandmother. . . . It seems to me that you--that you have had
too much already."

"Thank you, son. . . . Much obliged."

The captain's tone was almost gruff and that was his only reference to
the subject of the promise; but somehow Albert felt that at that moment
he and his grandfather were closer together, were nearer to a mutual
understanding and mutual appreciation than they had ever been before.

To promise, however, is one thing, to fulfill the obligation another. As
the days passed Albert found his promise concerning letter-writing very,
very hard to keep. When, each evening he sat down at the table in
his room to pour out his soul upon paper it was a most unsatisfactory
outpouring. The constantly enforced recollection that whatever he wrote
would be subject to the chilling glance of the eye of Fosdick mater was
of itself a check upon the flow. To write a love letter to Madeline had
hitherto been a joy, a rapture, to fill pages and pages a delig