the doorway, he remembered with painful certainty her attitude toward
his propensity to pick up any stray that might catch him in a moment of
too pronounced mellowness--stray human or feline or lost yellow dog.

Sarah's gaze, however, was not for her brother at that moment. Her
eyes were fixed unswervingly upon the figure in the once-white drill
trousers and bobbed swallow-tail coat and shuffling boots. She was
staring from wide and, Caleb noted, rather horror-stricken eyes at the
huge steel trap above the blanket pack. But the boy who must have
received her glance full in his face had not faltered a step in his
advance. He went forward until he stood at the foot of the low steps
which mounted to the veranda; and there he stopped, looking up at her,
and removed his battered hat. Caleb ranged awkwardly up alongside him
and looked up at her in turn. He, searching desperately for a neat and
cleverly casual opening speech, could not know that beneath her
forbidding manner a peal of soft laughter was struggling for utterance;
could not know that, at that moment, she was telling herself that, of
the two, Caleb was far the younger.

At last he cleared his throat, oratorically, and then she promptly
interrupted him.

"Supper is served, Cal," she drawled in her gentle, almost lisping
voice.

Caleb received the statement as if it were an astounding bit of
hitherto undreamed-of news.

"Comin', Sarah!" he chirped briskly. "Comin' this blessed minute!"

And then, with an attempt at disingenuousness:

"I--I've a friend here, Sarah, whom I'd like to--er--present to you!
This is my sister, Miss Hunter," he announced to the silent boy, "and
this young man, Sarah, this young man is--er--ah--Mr.----"

"I'm Steve," said the boy, mildly. "I'm just Stephen O'Mara!"

"Certainly!" gasped Caleb. "Quite so--quite so! Sarah, this is just
Steve."

The frail little woman with her quaint dignity of another decade failed
to move; she did not unbend so much as the fraction of an inch. But
hard upon the heels of Caleb's last words the boy went forward
unhesitatingly. Hat in the hand that balanced his big steel trap, he
stopped in front of her and offered one brown paw.

"Haow dye do, Miss Hunter," he saluted her, gravely. And with a slow
smile that discovered for her a row of white and even teeth: "Haow dye
do? I--I reckon you're the first--dressed-up lady I ever did git to
know!"

The calm statement took what little bre