ument tells, Mrs. Burns," he said. "I suppose it is
ungracious of me, but, to tell the truth, I've always preferred to be
able to say I had no portraits of myself."

"Oh, I see," Burns broke in. "We're not considering, Ellen, the urgent
demands for a popular bachelor surgeon's photograph. It's precisely like
Jack not to hand them out to the ladies, or to the newspaper men. All
right, old chap. Give us what we want and we'll have the plate smashed.
Now will you be good? Come, let's go over. If you really mean to leave
to-night this is our last chance."

The two men crossed the street, in the mellow September sunshine. Burns
preceded Leaver and knocked at the door.

"Will you take a shot at my friend before he goes?" Burns asked
Charlotte. "He hates standing up to be shot at, but I have him primed
for the ordeal."

"Must it be a shot, or may I make a portrait?" asked the photographer, in
her professional manner.

"I want a portrait," replied Burns, promptly. "Your best indoor
work--Brant and the Misses Kendall put on their mettle to rival it."

While Charlotte was absent, making ready her plates, her visitors waited
in the little living-room and looked about it. Its walls were now
possessed of many interesting photographs of people in the village,
among them several of Burns himself, at which he gazed with a quizzical
expression.

"She certainly succeeds in making a hero of me, doesn't she?" he
observed. "Red hair turns dusky before the camera, luckily for me. I look
as if there wasn't much of anything I couldn't do, including playing
leading man in a melodrama--eh?"

"She has caught the personality, cleverly enough," Leaver commented,
looking over Burns's shoulder.

"I rather think, though," mused Burns, "that I don't look so much as if
there wasn't anything I couldn't do as that I thought there wasn't.
There's a difference, Jack,--eh? Do I really seem as ready to bounce out
of my chair and tackle somebody as that picture makes me look? If I do I
need to have a tourniquet applied somewhere about my neck to stop the
flow of blood to my bumptious head."

Smiling, Leaver studied the photograph in question. "It's the best I ever
saw of you. It's precisely that air of being all there and ready for
action which is your most endearing characteristic. It is the quality
which made me willing to put myself in your hands last April."

"Much obliged. But you didn't put yourself in my hands. I laid hands
on you and tied