Kitty took Mr. Chanter's hint, and said no more about the stranger who had startled her and Pilot. Late that afternoon we two went for a walk, as we were apt to do when she was at liberty, and I turned naturally into what we always called Sunset Road, because the sun seemed to go down at the end of it. Kitty hesitated a moment at the corner, as if she would suggest another direction; then turned with a little shrug of self-rebuke and walked beside me. She was rather silent; we usually babbled like twin brooks towards the close of the day. When we passed the Gaylord house, I looked up and to my amazement saw a thin blue thread stealing up from one of the chimneys. "Kitty!" I said. "Look! do you see the smoke? Some one is in the Gaylord house!" Kitty told no one but me and Judge Peters; I am very sure Mr. Chanter told no one else: but little by little the knowledge sifted through Cyrus that Russell Gaylord had come back once more. That he was living in a corner of his great house, with not even a dog to bear him company. That there was no use in any one's trying to see him, as he would not open the door, even to the Messrs. Jebus, his old schoolmates, who had wished to show that they were prepared to let bygones be bygones and welcome the prodigal back to their kindly shop. Lastly, that he was a wreck, and no one knew how he lived or where he got bread to put in his mouth. This last statement was false; some one did know. Mr. Mallow sat up long after curfew these spring nights; long after his staid "help" were snugly tucked in their beds. Usually his bedroom light went out at ten punctually; now it might be midnight when, nodding by the kitchen fire, he would hear, or think he heard, a shuffling step on the walk outside the back door. Then he would open the door and stand in the cold, holding it wide open so that the red fire-light would shine out on the darkness. "Russ," he would whisper, "that you? Come in, won't you? Step in, and set with me a spell! what say? I'm rill lon'some!" Usually no answer came; then he would say, "Basket's behind the door, Russ! Call again when 'tis empty! Good-night, old chap!" and shut the door with a sigh, and so to bed. Usually, I say: but if now and then a bent, shivering figure crept in and sat for half an hour by the fire, warming its hands and listening dumbly to the friendly pleadings, the kindly offers, why, no one but Marshall Mallow ever knew it. CHAPTER X THE PARTY "Going?" said Miss Johanna Ross: "of course I'm not going, Gerie; bed-ridden folks don't go to parties--except in novels. I might be carried in like that woman in 'Barchester Towers,' in a white velvet gown on a red silk sofa--or was it a red shawl thrown over the sofa? Well, I have no white velvet gown, but I think I could get up a fancy rig. Imagine Madam Flynt's face! Do you advise it, Gerie?"