th
roses swinging from her arm, a Scotch collie with great lustrous eyes
pressed against her side. The pose, the attributes, were artificial; but
the painter had caught the spirit. Nannie's face looked out of the frame
as I remembered it from long ago. Youth and gaiety and goodness trembled
on her lips and laughed in her eyes. The picture seemed a prophecy of
all the happiness the future was to bring. Nannie at eighteen with life
before her!

And three years later she was dying in a dreary little Western town,
separated from her girlhood friends, without a word of forgiveness from
her father. What had she done to deserve this fate? Merely set up her
will against his, and married the man she loved. Her husband was poor,
but from all I ever heard, a very decent chap. As I studied the eager
smiling face, I felt a hot wave of anger against her father. What a
power of vindictiveness the man must have, still to cherish rancour
against a daughter fifteen years in her grave! There was something too
poignantly sad about the unfulfilled hope of the picture. I blew out the
candles to rid my mind of poor little Nannie's smile.

I sat for some time my eyes fixed moodily on the glowing embers, till I
was roused by the deep boom of the hall clock as it slowly counted
twelve. I rose with a laugh and a yawn. The first of the doctor's orders
had been, "Early to bed!" I hastily made ready, but before turning in,
paused for a moment by the open window, enticed by the fresh country
smells of plowed land and sprouting green things, that blew in on the
damp breeze. It was a wild night with a young moon hanging low in the
sky. Shadows chased themselves over the lawn and the trees waved and
shifted in the wind. It had been a long time since I had looked out on
such a scene of peaceful tranquillity as this. New York with the hurry
and rush of its streets, with the horrors of Terry's morgue, seemed to
lie in another continent.

But suddenly I was recalled to the present by hearing, almost beneath
me, the low shuddering squeak of an opening window. I leaned out
silently alert, and to my surprise I saw Cat-Eye Mose--though it was
pretty dark I could not be mistaken in his long loping run--slink out
from the shadow of the house and make across the open space of lawn
toward the deserted negro cabins. As he ran he was bent almost double
over a large black bundle which he carried in his arms. Though I
strained my eyes to follow him I could make out