ginally as a dining-room,
and so came into lamplight again and the presence of Miss Blue Cloak.

He made her a bow and smiled in upon her cheerfully. She, perched on
an oilcloth-covered table, her booted feet swinging, a thick sandwich
in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other, took time to
look him up and down seriously and to swallow before she answered his
bow with a quick, bird-like nod.

"Don't mind me," she said briefly, having swallowed again. "Dig in and
help yourself."

On the table beside her were bread, butter, a very dry and
black-looking roast, and a blacker but more tempting coffee-pot.

"I didn't follow you on purpose," said Packard. "Back there where the
roads forked I saw that you had turned to the left, so I turned to the
right."

"All roads lead to Rome," she said around the corner of the big
sandwich. "Anyway, it's all right. I guess I owe you a square meal
and a night's lodging for being on the job when my car stalled."

"Not to mention for diving into the lake after you," amended Packard.

"I _wouldn't_ mention it if I were you," she retorted. "Seeing that
you just made a fool of yourself that time."

She openly sniffed the air as he stepped by her reaching out for
butcher-knife and roast. "So you are dad's kind, are you? Hitting the
booze every show you get. The Lord deliver me from his chief blunder.
Meaning a man."

"He probably will," grinned Packard genially. "And as for turning up
your nose at a fellow for taking a drop o' kindness with a hospitable
host, why, that's all nonsense, you know."

Terry kicked her high heels impudently and vouchsafed him no further
answer beyond that easy gesture. Packard made his own sandwich, found
the salt, poured a tin cup of coffee.

"The sugar's over there." She jerked her head toward a shelf on which,
after some searching among a lot of empty and nearly empty cans,
Packard found it. "That's all there is and precious little left; help
yourself but don't forget breakfast comes in the morning."

"This is the old Slade place, isn't it?" Packard asked.

"It was, about the time the big wall was building in China. Where've
you been the last couple of hundred years? It's the Temple place now."

"Then you're Miss Temple?"

"Teresa Arriega for my mother, Temple for my dad," she told him in the
quick, bright way which already he found characteristic of her. "Terry
for myself, if you say it quick."

He had suspected from