is very hard that two
people who understand each other can not be friends without other
people shoving in their ugly beaks! Where is the harm to any one if we
choose to have a few minutes' talk together now and then?"

"Where, indeed?" responded Letty shyly.

A tall shadow--no shadow either, but the very person of Godfrey
Wardour--passed the opening in the wall of the hut where once had been
a window, and the gloom it cast into the dusk within was awful and
ominous. The moment he saw it, Tom threw himself flat on the clay floor
of the hut. Godfrey stopped at the doorless entrance, and stood on the
threshold, bending his head to clear the lintel as he looked in.
Letty's heart seemed to vanish from her body. A strange feeling shook
her, as if some mysterious transformation were about to pass upon her
whole frame, and she were about to be changed into some one of the
lower animals. The question, where was the harm, late so triumphantly
put, seemed to have no heart in it now. For a moment that had to Letty
the air of an aeon, Godfrey stood peering.

Not a little to his displeasure, he had heard from his mother of her
refusal to grant Letty's request, and had set out in the hope of
meeting and helping her home, for by that time it had begun to rain,
and looked stormy.

In the darkness he saw something white, and, as he gazed, it grew to
Letty's face. The strange, scared, ghastly expression of it bewildered
him.

Letty became aware that Godfrey did not recognize her at first, and the
hope sprung up in her heart that he might not see Tom at all; but she
could not utter a word, and stood returning Godfrey's gaze like one
fascinated with terror. Presently her heart began again to bear witness
in violent piston-strokes.

"Is it really you, my child?" said Godfrey, in an uncertain voice--for,
if it was indeed she, why did she not speak, and why did she look so
scared at the sight of him?

"O Cousin Godfrey!" gasped Letty, then first finding a little voice,
"you gave me such a start!"

"Why should you be so startled at seeing me, Letty?" he returned. "Am I
such a monster of the darkness, then?"

"You came all at once," replied Letty, gathering courage from the
playfulness of his tone, "and blocked up the door with your shoulders,
so that not a ray of light fell on your face; and how was I to know it
was you, Cousin Godfrey?"

From a paleness grayer than death, her face was now red as fire; it was
the burning of the l