ning light among the shelves near the desk, altering the
position of books here and there, and glancing cursorily through others.
Once or twice she went to the door and looked out upon the rain-soaked
street. A tradesman's assistant, opposite, was rolling the iron shutters
down for the night. If business in hats was over for the day, how much
more so in books! Her shop had never been fitted with shutters--for what
reason she could not guess. The opened pages of numerous volumes were
displayed close against the window, but no one had ever broken a pane
to get at them. Apparently literature raised no desires in the criminal
breast. To close the shop there was nothing to do but lock and bolt the
door and turn out the lights. At last, as the conviction of nightfall
forced itself upon her from the drenched darkness outside, she bent
to put her hand to the key. Then, with a little start of surprise,
she stood erect. Someone was shutting an umbrella in the doorway,
preparatory to entering the shop.

It was her brother, splashed and wet to the knees, but with a glowing
face, who pushed his way in, and confronted her with a broad grin. There
was such a masterful air about him, that when he jovially threw an arm
round her gaunt waist, and gathered her up against his moist shoulder,
she surprised herself by a half-laughing submission.

Her vocabulary was not rich in phrases for this kind of emergency. "Do
mind what you're about!" she told him, flushing not unpleasurably.

"Shut up the place!" he answered, with lordly geniality. "I've walked
all the way from the City in the rain. I wanted the exertion--I couldn't
have sat in a cab. Come back and build up the fire, and let's have a
talk. God! What things I've got to tell you!"

"There isn't any fire down here," she said, apologetically, as they
edged their way through the restricted alley to the rear. "The old
fireplace took up too much room. Sometimes, in very sharp weather, I
have an oil-stove in. Usually the gas warms it enough. You don't find
it too cold--do you?--with your coat on? Or would you rather come
upstairs?"

"Never mind the cold," he replied, throwing a leg over the stool before
the desk. "I can't stay more 'n a minute or two. What do you think we've
done today?"

Louisa had never in her life seen her brother look so well as he did
now, sprawling triumphantly upon the stool under the yellow gas-light.
His strong, heavily-featured face had somehow ceased to be co