ing it within the palm
of his hand as if it had been some delicate flower which the pressure of
a finger might crush, he strode to the door, but stopped. Should he
give it to his aunt? Even if she overlooked this evident proof of
HIS carelessness, what would she think of the young lady's? Ought
he--seductive thought!--go downstairs again, knock at the door, and give
it to its fair owner, with the apology he was longing to make? Then he
remembered that he had but a few moments before been dismissed from the
room very much as if he were the original proprietor of the skin he had
taken. Perhaps they were right; perhaps he WAS only a foolish clumsy
animal! Yet SHE had thanked him--and had said in her sweet childlike
voice, "It is a great thing to be strong; a greater thing to be strong
and gentle." He was strong; strong men had said so. He did not know if
he was gentle too. Had she meant THAT, when she turned her strangely
soft dark eyes upon him? For some moments he held the slipper
hesitatingly in his hand, then he opened his trunk, and disposing
various articles around it as if it were some fragile, perishable
object, laid it carefully therein.

This done, he drew off his boots, and rolling himself in his blanket,
lay down upon the bed. He did not open his novel--he did not follow
up the exciting love episode of his favorite hero--so ungrateful
is humanity to us poor romancers, in the first stages of their real
passion. Ah, me! 'tis the jongleurs and troubadours they want then, not
us! When Master Slender, sick for sweet Anne Page, would "rather than
forty shillings" he had his "book of songs and sonnets" there, what
availed it that the Italian Boccaccio had contemporaneously discoursed
wisely and sweetly of love in prose? I doubt not that Master Jeff would
have mumbled some verse to himself had he known any: knowing none, he
lay there and listened to the wind.

Did she hear it; did it keep her awake? He had an uneasy suspicion that
the shutter that was banging so outrageously was the shutter of her
room. Filled with this miserable thought, he arose softly, stole down
the staircase, and listened. The sound was repeated. It was truly
the refractory shutter of No. 7--the best bedroom adjoining the
sitting-room. The next room, No. 8, was vacant. Jeff entered it softly,
as softly opened the window, and leaning far out in the tempest, essayed
to secure the nocturnal disturber. But in vain. Cord or rope he
had none, nor coul