ell Hunt on me, will you,
Miss? He'd fair kill the life out o' me! He's comin' now. 'e 'ad to
go, Miss, fer his little boy was took sick last night and callin'
for 'im. So 'e made up the errant. But it'll cost us both our place,
y' know, Miss!"

The man's voice shook. Hunt was very near them now, walking hard.

"I'd no business to leave, I know--_will_ you h'overlook it for
once, Miss, and keep mum?" the man pleaded.

"All right, Gleggson--all right," she said wearily, "I won't tell."

Confused, disappointed, and yet with a curious sense of joy in the
joy of the two even now rounding the corner, she leaned back in the
brougham.

"I'm afraid he'll go to Harvard, anyway," she sighed.

IV

WHERE THIEVES BREAK IN.

One glance at Caroline's shoulders, hunched with caution, the merest
profile, indeed, of her tense and noiseless advance up the narrow
gravel path, would have convinced the most casual observer that she
was bent upon arson, at the least. At the occasional crunch of the
gravel she scowled; the well meant effort of a speckled gray hen,
escaped from some distant part of the grounds, to bear her company,
produced a succession of pantomimic dismissals that alarmed the hen
to the point of frenzy, so that her clacks and cackles resounded far
beyond the trim hedge that separated the drying-ground from the
little kitchen garden.

Caroline scowled, turned to shake her fist at the hen, now lumbering
awkwardly through the hedge, and sat down heavily on a little bed of
parsley.

"Nasty old thing!" she gulped, "_anybody_ could've heard me! And I
was creeping up so still...."

She peered out from behind a dwarf evergreen and made a careful
survey of the situation. The big square house stood placid and empty
in the afternoon sun; not a cat on the kitchen porch, not a curtain
fluttering from an open window. All was neat, quiet and deserted.
Caroline set her lips with decision.

"We'll pretend there wasn't any hen," she said, in a low voice, "and
go on from here, just the same."

Rising with great caution she picked her way, crouching and dodging,
from bush to bush; occasionally she took a lightning peep at the
silent house, then dipped again and continued her stalking.
Following the evergreen hedge around a final corner, she emerged
stealthily in the lee of the latticed kitchen porch and drew a
breath of relief.

"All right so far," she muttered; "I wonder if that old gray cat
with the new kittens is