ener was engaged in
the removal of the more delicate ornamental growths about the
porte-cochere and parterre to the shelter of the flower-pit, for bright
chill weather and killing frosts would ensue on the dispersal of the
mists. Mrs. Briscoe herself was intent on withdrawing certain hardier
potted plants merely from the verge of the veranda to a wire-stand well
under the roof. Briscoe was at the gun-rack in the hall, restoring to its
place the favorite rifle he had intended to use to-day. He could not
refrain from testing its perfect mechanism, and at the first sharp crack
of the hammer, liberated by a tentative pull on the trigger, little
Archie sprang up from his play on the hearth-rug, where he was harnessing
a toy horse to Mrs. Briscoe's work-basket by long shreds of her zephyr,
and ran clamoring for permission to hold the gun.

Mrs. Briscoe saw him through the open door and instantly protested: "Come
away, Archie!" Then to her husband, "You men are always killing somebody
with an unloaded gun. Come away, Archie!"

"Nonsense, Gladys!" Briscoe remonstrated. "Let the child see the rifle.
There is not a shell in the whole rack."

She noticed her husband not at all. "Come away, Archie," she besought the
little man, staring spellbound with his big blue eyes. He had scant care
for the authority of "Gad-ish," as Gladys loved for him lispingly to call
her. Only when she began to plead that she had no one to help her with
her flowers, to carry the pots for her, did he wrench himself from the
contemplation of the flashing steel mechanism that had for him such
wonderful fascination and lend his flaccid baby muscles to the fiction of
help. He began zealously to toil to and fro, carrying the smallest pots
wherever she bade him. Her own interest in the occupation was enhanced by
the colloquy that ensued whenever she passed her small guest. "Hello,
Archie!" she would call for the sake of hearing the saucy, jocose
response: "Oh, oo Gad-ish!" as the juvenile convoy fared along with his
small cargo.

Lillian felt that she could not wait. Gladys might come at her leisure.
She burst impulsively out of the door, throwing on her hat as she went,
albeit wincing that she must needs pass Bayne at close quarters as he
still lounged in the veranda swing. He looked up at the sound of the
swift step and the sudden stir, and for one instant their eyes met--an
inscrutable look, fraught with an undivined meaning. For their lives,
neither coul