one might follow, so stealthily that none might hinder. A
sudden radiance broke upon her face, a sudden shadow fell on the
firelit floor, and there was entering at the doorway a tall, lithe young
mountaineer, whose first glance, animated with a responsive brightness,
was for the girl, but whose punctilious greeting was addressed to the
old woman.

"Howdy, Mis' Roxby--howdy? Air yer rheumatics mendin' enny?" he
demanded, with the condolent suavity of the would-be son-in-law, or
grand-son-in-law, as the case may be. And he hung with a transfixed
interest upon her reply, prolix and discursive according to the wont of
those who cultivate "rheumatics," as if each separate twinge racked his
own sympathetic and filial sensibilities. Not until the tale was ended
did he set his gun against the wall and advance to the seat which Roxby
had indicated with the end of the stick he was whittling. He observed
the stranger with only slight interest, till Dundas drew up his chair
opposite at the table. There the light from the tallow dip, guttering in
the centre, fell upon his handsome face and eyes, his carefully tended
beard and hair, his immaculate cuffs and delicate hand, the seal-ring on
his taper finger.

"Like a gal, by gum!" thought Emory Keenan. "Rings on his fingers--yit
six feet high!"

He looked at his elders, marvelling that they so hospitably repressed
the disgust which this effeminate adornment must occasion, forgetting
that it was possible that they did not even observe it. In the gala-days
of the old hotel, before the war, they had seen much "finicking finery"
in garb and equipage and habits affected by the _jeunesse doree_ who
frequented the place in those halcyon times, and were accustomed to
such details. It might be that they and Millicent approved such flimsy
daintiness. He began to fume inwardly with a sense of inferiority in her
estimation. One of his fingers had been frosted last winter, and with
the first twinge of cold weather it was beginning to look very red and
sad and clumsy, as if it had just remembered its ancient woe; he glanced
from it once more at the delicate ringed hand of the stranger.

Dundas was looking up with a slow, deferential, decorous smile that
nevertheless lightened and transfigured his expression. It seemed
somehow communicated to Millicent's face as she looked down at him from
beneath her white eyelids and long, thick, dark lashes, for she was
standing beside him, handing him the pla