like a movie queen?"

"Well," he said, picking up his hat, "maybe if I go in with Angelo
Puma some day I'll see you again and we'll talk it over."

She shook hands with him.

"Be good," he called back as she closed the front door behind him.

The early winter night had fallen over Shadow Hill. Palla turned on
the electric light, stood for a while looking sombrely at the framed
photographs of her father and mother, then, feeling lonely, went into
the kitchen where Martha was busy with preparations for dinner.

"Martha," she said, "I'm going to New York."

"Well, for the land's sake----"

"Yes, and I'm going day after to-morrow."

"What on earth makes you act like a gypsy, Palla?" she demanded
querulously, seasoning the soup and tasting it. "Your pa and ma wasn't
like that. They was satisfied to set and rest a mite after being away.
But you've been gone four years 'n more, and now you're up and off
again, hippity-skip! clippity-clip!----"

"I'm just going to run down to New York and look about. I want to look
around and see what----"

"That's _you_, Palla! That's what you allus was doing as a
child--allus looking about you with your wide brown eyes, to see what
you could see in the world!... You know what curiosity did to the
cat?"

"What?"

"Pinched her paw in the mouse-trap."

"I'll be careful," said the girl, laughing.

CHAPTER V

In touch with his unexciting business again, after many months of
glorious absence, and seated once more at his abhorred yellow-oak
desk, young Shotwell discovered it was anything except agreeable for
him to gather up the ravelled thrums of civilian life after the
thrilling taste of service over seas.

For him, so long accustomed to excitement, the zest of living seemed
to die with the signing of the armistice.

In fact, since the Argonne drive, all luck seemed to have deserted
him; for in the very middle of operations he had been sent back to the
United States as instructor; and there the armistice had now caught
him. Furthermore, then, before he realised what dreadful thing was
happening to him, he had been politely assigned to that vague limbo
supposedly inhabited by a mythical organisation known as The Officers'
Reserve Corps, and had been given indefinite leave of absence
preliminary to being mustered out of the service of the United
States.

To part from his uniform was agonising, and he berated the fate that
pried him loose from tunic and puttees. So d