delightfully
thrilled by the anecdote, but as it was always received either with
open or carefully concealed disbelief, after a few days neither Polly
nor Betty cared to speak of it except to each other.

There was one person, however, who, whether or not he believed the
truth of their story, at least accepted it with extreme seriousness.
And it was to him that Polly O'Neill made a determined effort to be the
first narrator of their experience.

Anthony Graham was in the habit of getting up earlier than any one else
in the Ashton house and had of course disappeared hours before either
of the girls awakened the morning after their nearly sleepless night.
However, he was accustomed to returning to his small room in the third
story at about half-past five o'clock every afternoon, when his work
for the day was over, in order to change his clothes for the evening.
So at about this time Polly found it convenient to be in the hallway
leading to his room and to be there alone.

As he walked toward her unconscious of her presence, in spite of her
prejudice against him she could not fail to see how much the young man
had improved. He was hardly recognizable as the boy with whom they had
had the encounter in the woods a little more than a year before. He
was shabby enough and as lean as a young animal that has had too much
exercise and too little food. His face was serious, almost sad;
nevertheless Polly had no intention of not pursuing her investigation.

She had seated herself on a narrow window ledge and was presumably
peering out at the trees in the garden.

As he caught sight of her the young man started with a perfectly
natural surprise. For although Polly had been in the same house with
him now for a number of weeks, they had not seen each other more than
half a dozen times and had only talked together once when Betty had
made a point of introducing them as though they had never met before.

Perhaps some recollection of their original coming together was in
Anthony's memory, for he blushed a kind of dull brick red, when Polly,
turning deliberately from her window seat, said: "Mr. Graham, I wonder
if you would mind giving me a minute of your time. There is something
I wish to tell you."

"Certainly," he answered and then stood fingering his hat in the same
awkward fashion that he had employed in his Thanksgiving visit to
Betty, yet regarding the girl herself with a totally different
sensation.

For instinctiv