mp tendrils of gold strayed about her temples. She
threw down her hat, and loosened the kerchief of delicate lawn from
about her warm young throat; then, with the flowers still in her arms,
she raised the latch of the door of a room held sacred to Colonel
Verney, and entered, to find herself face to face with the convict,
Godfrey Landless, who sat at a table covered with papers, busily
writing.

She started violently, and the mass of flowers fell to the floor,
shattering the petals from the roses and poppies. Landless came forward,
knelt down, and, picking them up, restored them to her without a word.

"I thank you," she said coldly. "I thought my father was here."

"Colonel Verney is in the next room, madam."

She moved to the door leading into the great room with the gait of a
princess, and Landless went back to his work.

Colonel Verney, on his knees before the richly carven chest containing
his library, looked up from the two score volumes to behold a mass of
brilliant blooms transferred from two white arms to the ground outside
the open window.

"Well, sweetheart," he said. "What is it?"

"Papa," she said, coming to his side, and looking down upon him with a
vexed face; "you promised me that you would employ no more convicts in
the house."

"Why, so I did, my dear," answered her father, comfortably seating
himself upon "Purchas: His Pilgrimmes." "And I meant to keep my word,
but this is the way of it. The day after you went to Rosemead with Betty
Carrington, down comes young Shaw with the fever, and has to be sent
home to his mother. His illness came at a precious inconvenient season,
for the gout was in my fingers again, and I was bent on disappointing
William Berkeley, who hath wagered a thousand pounds of sweet scented
that my 'Statement of the Evil Wrought by the Navigation Laws to His
Majesty's Colony of Virginia' won't be finished in time for the sailing
of the God-Speed. So I told Woodson to find me some one among the men
who knew how to write. He brought me this fellow, and I vow he is an
improvement on young Shaw. He doesn't ask questions, and he is a very
pretty Latinist. The paper will be finished to-day. I was but searching
for a neat quotation to close with. Then the fellow will go back to the
tobacco, and you will be no longer annoyed by his presence in the house.
Now kiss me, sweet chuck, and begone, for I am busied upon affairs of
state."

Left alone, Colonel Verney pored over his books u