"Gi' me my juice-harp, Sarah Ann----" she was saying, when of a sudden she screamed louder than the cat and bounded into the air, sending her manuscript in fluttering leaves all over the room. The cat, with level tail and fiery eyes, sailed through the door-way into the hall, and went as if possessed of a devil, bounding up the stairway to Mrs. Philpot's room. Congratulations were in order, and Lucas insisted upon bellowing in Miss Nebeker's ear his appreciation of the powerful effect produced by the last scene in the little drama. "If our friends who are out in this rain are finding anything half as entertaining," he thundered, "they needn't mind the drenching." "But I'm bitten, I'm scratched, I'm hurt," she exclaimed. Lucas suddenly realized the brutality of his attitude, and hastened to rectify it by collecting the leaves of her manuscript and handing them to her. "I beg pardon," he said sincerely, "I hope you are not hurt much." "Just like a cat," she cried, "always under somebody's feet! I do despise them!" With a burning face and trembling hands she swiftly rearranged the manuscript and assuming the proper attitude asked the audience to be seated again. "I am bitten and scratched quite severely," she said, "and am suffering great pain, but if you will resume your places I will begin over again." "Call that cat back, then, quick!" exclaimed Lucas, "it's the star performer in the play." She proceeded forthwith, setting out on a new journey through the tortuous ways of the poem, and held up very well to the end. What she called New Jersey patois was a trifle flat when put into verse and she lacked the polished buffoonery of a successful dialect reader, wherefore she failed to get along very successfully with her audience in the absence of the cat; still the reading served to kill a good deal of time, by a mangling process. The storm was over long ago when she had finished, and the sun was flooding the valley with golden splendor. Along the far away mountain ridges some slanting wisps of whitish mist sailed slowly, like aerial yachts riding dark blue billows. The foliage of the trees, lately dusky and drooping, twinkled vividly with a green that was almost dazzling, and the air was deliciously fresh and fragrant. Everybody went out on the veranda for a turn and a deep breath. The mail had arrived and by a mistake a bundle of letters bearing the card of George Dunkirk & Co., and addressed to "George Dunkirk, Esq., Hotel Helicon, room 24," was handed to Lucas. The historian gazed at the superscription, adjusted his glasses and gazed again, and slowly the truth crept into his mind. There were ten or fifteen of the letters. Evidently some of them, as Lucas's experience suggested, had alien letters inclosed within their envelopes, and thus forwarded by the mailing clerk of the firm had at last come to the senior partner at room 24.