, and the
answering affection he received was one of the most beautiful of
tributes to his own fine qualities.

When Randolph was ready to talk he told the story of the day--its
hope, its disappointment, and humiliation.

"It beats the Dutch, Steve. I can't think what was the matter. There
wasn't a thing I did or a word I said to make her behave so."

Steve was softly poking the fire from above. The night was quite cool
for June.

"No, there was not," Randolph reaffirmed. "I've gone over the whole
day again and again. I didn't give her the least excuse. What do you
suppose was the matter with her?"

Steve looked up with an almost startled air.

"Oh, I'm sure I can't say. They're quite beyond me."

"They're beyond every one," said Randolph in the tone of a Supreme
Court judge. "I don't see what the Lord made them for."

Steve looked up again and there was the least suspicion of a twinkle
in his eye.

"How is it," he asked in his gentle way--"how many of them is it you
are prepared to manage?"

Randolph brought his chair down on its four legs.

"Not a confounded one!" he said.

III

For a time Randolph Chance was fairly dazed by the suddenness with
which his fortune changed. Yesterday it was down--deep down; to-day it
had gone flying up. He had followed Constance Leigh when she walked to
the lake in the afternoon; had helped her from a perilous place in the
midst of rough winds and still rougher waves; and as he took her from
the pier their eyes had met, and this was why, later on, he sat by his
friend's fireside in a state of bewildered rapture.

An outsider, one of the world's common folk, would have made but
little out of Randolph's brief, rough-hewn sentences. But Loveland was
finely strung; he understood.

"I can't forget that look. It breaks me all up every time I think of
it."

Randolph spoke like a man who was talking to himself.

"It's so unreal--I may have dreamed it," he went on slowly. "I tell
you, Steve"--this with a sudden turn--"I don't dare to hope, but
if----"

There was no perceptible tremor in his voice, but the sentence broke
sharply.

"I know, old man, I know," said Steve in his gentlest voice.

And he poked the fire softly between the ribs of the grate.

It seemed that Randolph's hope was not without foundation, for after
he had been the toy of fate somewhat longer he came to Steve one night
with great news, and yet no news to Ste