ust now I'm only a man who's come a long way to see you.
Is it really you?"

He leaned forward, studying her intently. His head, with its coppery
thatch of heavy hair, showed powerful lines in the lamplight; beneath
his dark throws the hazel eyes glowed black.

"It's certainly I," she answered lightly. "And being I, with the
mistress of the house prevented from showing you hospitality, I must
offer it. She begged me to make you comfortable and to tell you she
would see you in the morning. You've had a long journey. You must want
the comfort of a room and hot water. I'll ring for Old Sam."

She crossed the room and pulled an old-fashioned bell-cord, upon which a
bell was heard to jangle far away. The old darky reappeared.

"I should have gone to a hotel," Burns said, "if I could have found one
in the place."

"There is none. And if there had been Aunt Lucy would have been much
hurt to have you go there. Where did you leave your bag?"

"At the station. I can stay only for a night and a day, so it's a small
one."

"I'll send Young Sam for it. Now let Sam take you to your room, and in a
few minutes I'll give you supper."

"Don't bother about supper at this hour. I only want--"

"You want what you are to have,--some of Sue's delicious Southern
cookery." She smiled at him as he looked back at her, following the old
servant. "She's been in the family for forty years and she loves to have
company to appreciate her dishes. Sam, you are to help Doctor Burns. He
has had a broken arm."

When Burns came down, fresh from a bath and comfortable with clean
linen, he smelled odours which made him realize that, eager as he was
for other things, he was human enough to be intensely hungry with a
healthy man's appetite. So he surrendered himself to the fortunes that
now befell him.

Old Sam conducted him to the dining-room, a quaintly attractive
apartment where candle-light illumined the bare mahogany of the round
table laid with a large square of linen at his place and set with
delicate ancient china and silver. Ellen Lessing was already there in
a high-backed chair opposite the one set for him, a figure to which his
eyes were again drawn irresistibly and upon which they continued to rest
as he took his seat.

Sam disappeared toward the kitchen, and Burns spoke in a low voice
across the table.

"I feel as if I were in a dream," said he. "Forty-eight hours ago I
was rushing about, hundreds of miles from here, trying to atte