t--from the ruined kitchen
to the front window.

"Shut and lock that kitchen window, and lock the doors, and we'll go out
and find a lodging," she said, briefly. "You girls can bring a bag for
the night. Mine's at the station hard by; I'm glad I didn't bring it up
here."

It was when Lyddy shut and locked the kitchen window that she remembered
the young man again. The plank had been removed, the laboratory window
was closed, and the place unlighted.

"I guess he has some of the instincts of a gentleman, after all," she told
herself. "He didn't come back to bother me after doing what he could to
help."

Two hours later the Bray girls were seated in their aunt's comfortable
room at a boarding house on a much better block than the one on which the
tenement stood. Aunt Jane had ordered up tea and toast, and was sipping
the one and nibbling the other contentedly before a grate fire.

"This is what I call comfort," declared the old lady, who still kept her
bonnet on--nor would she remove it save to change it for a nightcap when
she went to bed.

"This is what I call comfort. A pleasant room in a house where I have no
responsibilities, and enough noise outside to assure me that I am in a
live town. My goodness me! when Hammond came along and wanted to marry
me, and I knew I could leave Hillcrest and never have to go back----Well,
I just about jumped down that man's throat I was so eager to say 'Yes!'
Marry him? I'd ha' married a Choctaw Injun, if he'd promised to take me
to the city."

"Why, Aunt Jane!" exclaimed Lyddy. "Hillcrest Farm is a beautiful place.
Mother took us there once to see it. Don't you remember, 'Phemie? _She_
loved it, too."

"And I wish she'd had it as a gift from the old doctor," grumbled Aunt
Jane. "But it wasn't to be. It's never been anything but a nuisance to
me, if I _was_ born there."

"Why, the view from the porch is the loveliest I ever saw," said Lyddy.

"And all that romantic pile of rocks at the back of the farm!" exclaimed
'Phemie.

"Ha! what's a view?" demanded the old lady, in her brusk way. "Just dirt
and water. And that's what they say _we're_ made of. I like to study human
bein's, I do; so I'd ruther have my view in town."

"But it's so pretty----"

"Fudge!" snapped Aunt Jane. "I've seen the time, when I was a growin' gal,
and the old doctor was off to see patients, that I've stood on that same
porch at Hillcrest and just _cried_ for the sight of somethin' movin' on
the f