"The camp will be a great success,--I'm sure of
that."

"Oh, it's a case of sink or swim--I've got to make it go!" she replied
with her buoyant laugh. "If I don't succeed I can't emerge from the
woods next fall and face my creditors!"

"There's the buried treasure; you mustn't neglect that! I'm greatly your
debtor for all the interesting things you've told me. This has been the
happiest evening I've spent since----"

"Since you began taking everything so hard? Please quit looking on your
life as a burden; try to get some fun out of it!"

The door opened to the key she gave him and the light of the hall lamp
fell upon her face and glinted her brown hair as she put out her hand.

"Don't forget me in the rush of things! And particularly don't forget
that note of instructions. I'm counting on that!"

"Not really?" she exclaimed. "I was just in fun, you know."

"If I don't get it before I leave tomorrow evening, I shall be terribly
disappointed. I shall take it as a sign that you don't think me worth
bothering about!"

There was a pleading in his voice that held her for a moment; she
surveyed him gravely, then answered lightly,

"Oh, very well! You shall have it, sir!"

II

Archie didn't know that the note caused Isabel a great deal of trouble.
It was one thing to promise to tell a man who was all but a stranger
just how to alter his way of life with a view to a happier existence,
but to sit before a sheet of white paper and compose a letter on the
subject was a very different matter, as Isabel's waste-paper basket
could have testified. Her first experiments had been very serious, with
urgent recommendations of hard physical labor; but this proved
unsatisfactory. Then she attacked it from an ethical angle and suggested
social service as a means of destroying the selfishness which she
honestly believed to be one of his troubles.

She scribbled on a pad the titles of half a dozen hooks designed for
weary and disconsolate souls, but they hardly touched his case and
besides he had probably been deluged with just such literature.
Moreover, she must write a note that would not require an answer; this
she felt to be imperatively demanded by the circumstances. She thought
Archibald Bennett a nice fellow and she was sorry for him, but no more
and no less sorry than she would have been for any one else who failed
to find the world a pleasant place to live in. Something a little
cryptic, yet something that would disco