ight somnolence before going to bed, problems that, he knew, no man
could answer. Neither were they to be illumined by Holy Writ, for he had
offered that loophole of exit, and Caddie had shaken her head at him
disconsolately, and implied that the prophets would not do. But when she
had seemed to forget that interrogative attitude toward life, he had
settled down to unquestioning content in knowing he had the best
housekeeper in the neighborhood. Now here it was again, the spectre of
her queerness rising to distress him.

She looked at him with wide, affrighted eyes.

"You set here with me a spell," she adjured him. "I'll lay down on the
sofy, and you take the big rocker. If you see it comin' up in me, you
kinder say somethin', and mebbe it'll go away."

Myron, though in extreme unwillingness, did as he was bidden. He wanted
to bundle the whole troop of her imaginings out of doors, and plod off,
like a sane man, to his fencing; but somehow her earnestness itself
forbade. When they were established, she on the sofa, with her bright
eyes piercing him, and he seated at an angle where a nurse might easiest
wait upon a patient's needs, the absurdity of it all swept over him. The
clock was ticking irritatingly behind him. He looked at his watch, and
took assurance from the vision of the flying day.

"Now, Caddie," said he, in that specious soothing we accord to children,
"you lay right still, and I'll go out a spell and do a few chores, and
then mebbe I'll come in and see how you be."

Caddie put out a hand, and fastened it upon his in an inexorable clasp.

"No, Myron," said she, "you ain't goin'. If I should be left here to
myself, and it come up in me, I dunno what I might do."

Myron felt himself yielding again, and clutched at confidence as the
spent swimmer reaches for a plank.

"What do you think you'd do, Caddie?" he demanded. "That's what I want
to know."

"I can't tell, Myron," she returned solemnly. "True as I'm a livin'
woman, I can't tell you. Mebbe I'd go over to the Turnbull house and set
it a-fire, so 't I shouldn't ever live in it. Mebbe I'd take my
bank-book, and go up to the Street, and draw out that money aunt Susan
left me, and give it to Hermie, so 's he could run away, and take Annie
with him. If that other one come up in me, I dunno what I'd do."

Myron gazed at her, aghast.

"Why, Caddie," said he, "you can't go round settin' houses a-fire.
That's arson."

"Is it?" she inquired. "Well, I d