ng, and kissed his forehead,
and took both the child's hands in his.

"I heard you, Captain Roger; I heard the first tone of your voice, and
you sounded like an angel."

"Did I, Hugh? I don't think I look like an angel, do you? Did you ever
see a picture of one with a moustache?"

"Perhaps not; but it says that they don't always look like themselves,
you know. Many times they looked just like common men in the Bible. And
you were an angel when you came to me on the roof the other night."

Roger glanced quickly at Hildegarde; the girl nodded.

"He knows," she said. "I could not keep it from him, the moment he was
himself again. He pieced it all out, with hardly any help from me."

Roger looked grave, but his anxious look rested on Hildegarde, not on
Hugh.

"Did you take cold?" he asked.

"I? No, certainly not! Why should I take cold?"

"In your thin evening dress!" said Roger, reproachfully. "With slippers
on your feet,--there you stood in the snow, and would not go in when I
told you. I have thought of nothing but pneumonia and consumption ever
since. But--you look pretty well, I think!"

Hildegarde laughed in spite of herself.

"I--I thought you believed in being wet!" she said.

"For myself--of course! We are all polar bears, more or less; but it is
different with you."

"Very different!" said Hildegarde. "I had snow-boots on, Captain Roger,
all the time! Your anxiety has been thrown away, you see."

"So!" said Roger, with a look of intense relief. "I never thought of
that! I--I didn't think--"

"You didn't think I had sense enough!" cried Hildegarde. "No more I had!
They just happened to be on my feet, because I hadn't taken them off. I
had been sitting and looking out of the window, ever since the Christmas
Tree."

"So had I!" said Roger. "That was how we both happened to see. The moral
is--"

He did not say what the moral was, but sat pulling his moustache, and
looking at Hildegarde. Hildegarde felt herself blushing again; she tried
to speak of some trivial thing, but the words died on her lips; the
silence deepened every moment, and it seemed as if she and Roger were
drowning in it, going deeper and deeper down, down,--

Hugh looked cheerfully from one to the other; he saw that they were
embarrassed for some reason, and came to the rescue with his usual calm
philanthropy.

"Have you forgotten what you wanted to say? When I am going to say
anything, and then forget what I wanted to say, I s