gravely took off his cap.

"Excuse me," he said as though Hattie were twenty-five instead of
twelve. "Is Miss Searight at home?"

"Oh," exclaimed Hattie, delighted, "do you know Miss Searight? She was
my nurse when I was so sick--because you know I had hip disease and
there was an operation. No, she's not here any more. She's gone away,
gone back to the City."

"Gone back to the City?"

"Yes, three or four days ago. But I'm going to write to her this
afternoon. Shall I say who called?" Then, without waiting for a reply,
she added, "I guess I had better introduce myself. My name is Harriet
Campbell, and my papa is Craig V. Campbell, of the Hercules Wrought
Steel Company in the City. Won't you have a chair?"

The little convalescent and the arctic explorer shook hands with great
solemnity.

"I'm so pleased to meet you," said Bennett. "I haven't a card, but my
name is Ward Bennett--of the Freja expedition," he added. But, to his
relief, the little girl had not heard of him.

"Very well," she said, "I'll tell Miss Searight Mr. Bennett called."

"No," he replied, hesitatingly, "no, you needn't do that."

"Why, she won't answer my letter, you know," explained Hattie,
"because she is afraid her letters would give me typhoid fever,
that they might"--she continued carefully, hazarding a remembered
phrase--"carry the contagion. You see she has gone to nurse a dreadful
case of typhoid fever out at Medford, near the City, and we're so worried
and anxious about her--papa and I. One nurse that had this case has died
already and another one has caught the disease and is very sick, and Miss
Searight, though she knew just how dangerous it was, would go, just
like--like--" Hattie hesitated, then confused memories of her school
reader coming to her, finished with "like Casabianca."

"Oh," said Bennett, turning his head so as to fix her with his own good
eye. "She has gone to nurse a typhoid fever patient, has she?"

"Yes, and papa told me--" and Hattie became suddenly very grave, "that
we might--might--oh, dear--never see her again."

"Hum! Whereabouts is this place in Medford? She gave you her address;
what is it?" Hattie told him, and he took himself abruptly away.

Bennett had gone some little distance down the road before the real
shock came upon him. Lloyd was in a position of imminent peril; her life
was in the issue. With blind, unreasoned directness he leaped at once to
this conclusion, and as he strode along with t