im faces looked placidly down. The crumbling splendor of the
storm-racked sunset fell through old-fashioned leaded window-panes,
tinging the white Capodimonte figures on the mantelpiece.

As the trim colored woman moved lightly about in the growing dusk, with
the low click of glass and muffled clash of silver, the light _tat-tat_
of a cane sounded, and she ran to the hall, where Mrs. Dandridge was
descending the stairway, one slim white hand holding the banister, under
the edge of a white silk shawl which drooped its heavy fringes to her
daintily-shod feet. On the lower step she halted, looking smilingly
about at the blossoming bowls.

"_Don'_ they smell up th' whole house?" said Emmaline. "I knowed yo' be
pleas', Mis' Judith. Now put yo' han' on mah shouldah en I'll take yo'
to yo' big cha'h."

They crossed the hall, the dusky form bending to the fragile pressure of
the fingers. "Now heah's yo' cha'h. Ranston he made up a little fiah
jes' to take th' damp out, en th' big lamp's lit, en Miss Shirley'll be
down right quick."

A moment later, in fact, Shirley descended the stair, in a filmy gown of
India-muslin, with a narrow belting of gold, against whose flowing
sleeves her bare arms showed with a flushed pinkness the hue of the pale
coral beads about her neck. The damp newspaper was in her hand.

At her step her mother turned her head: she was listening intently to
voices that came from the garden--a child's shrill treble opposing
Ranston's stentorian grumble.

"Listen, Shirley. What's that Rickey is telling Ranston?"

"Don' yo' come heah wid yo' no-count play-actin'. Cyan' fool Ranston wid
no sich snek-story, neidah. Ain' no moc'sin at Dam'ry Co'ot, en nebbah
_was_!"

"There was, too!" insisted Rickey. "One bit him and Miss Shirley found
him and sent Uncle Jefferson for Doctor Southall and it saved his life!
So there! Doctor Southall told Mrs. Mason. And he isn't a man who's just
come to fix it up, either; he's the really truly man that owns it!"

"Who on earth is that child talking about?"

Shirley put her arm around her mother and kissed her. Her heart was
beating quickly. "The owner has come to Damory Court. He--"

The small book Mrs. Dandridge held fell to the floor. "The owner! What
owner?"

"Mr. Valiant--Mr. John Valiant. The son of the man who abandoned it so
long ago." As she picked up the fallen volume and put it into her
mother's hands, Shirley was startled by the whiteness of her face.

"Dea