aid."

The policeman looked dazed. Then, slowly, like dawn over a sleeping
lake, a light of comprehension grew in his face.

"Sure," he said, laying his helmet on the table. "I'll be glad to be
doing anything I can to help. Me and Mrs. Wilson--we used to be friends.
It's many the time I've opened the carriage door for her, and she with
her head in the air, and for all that, the pleasant smile. When any one
around her was having a party and wanted a special officer, it was Mrs.
Wilson that always said, Get Flannigan, Officer Timothy Flannigan. He's
your man.'"

My heart had been going lower and lower. So he knew Bella, and he knew I
was not Bella, although he had not grasped the fact that I was usurping
her place. The odious Harbison man sat on the table and swung his feet.

"I wonder if you know," he said, looking around him, "how good it is
to see a white woman so perfectly at home in a civilized kitchen again,
after two years of food cooked by a filthy Indian squaw over a portable
sheet-iron stove!"

SO PERFECTLY AT HOME? I stood in the middle of the room and stared
around at the copper things hanging up and the rows of blue and white
crockery, and the dozens and hundreds of complicated-looking utensils,
whose names I had never even heard, and I was dazed. I tried with some
show of authority to instruct Flannigan about gathering up the soiled
things, and, after listening in puzzled silence for a minute, he
stripped off his blue coat with a tolerant smile.

"Lave em to me, miss," he said. The "miss" passed unnoticed. "I mayn't
give em a Turkish bath, which is what you are describin', but I'll get
the grease off all right. I always clean up while the missus is in bed
with a young un."

He rolled up his sleeves, found a brown checked gingham apron behind
the door, and tied it around his neck with the ease of practice. Then
he cleared off the plates, eating what appealed to him as he did so, and
stopping now and again for a deep-throated chuckle.

"I'm thinkin'," he said once, stopping with a dish in the air, "what a
deuce of a noise there will be when the vaccination doctor comes around
this mornin'. In a week every one of us will be nursin' a sore arm or
walkin' on one leg, beggin' your pardon, miss. The last time the force
was vaccinated, I asked to be done behind me ear; I needed me legs and I
needed me arms, but didn't need me head much!"

He threw his head back and laughed. Mr. Harbison laughed. Oh, we wer