“It isn't nice to peep, Bug,” Burgess insisted, but he shaded his eyes and glanced in to please the boy. He did not note the pretty gilt frame nor the vase beside it on the table. But the face looking out of that frame made him turn almost as cold and limp as Fenneben had been when he was dragged from the river. Catching the little one by the hand he hurried away. At the gateway he lifted Bug in his arms. He was not yet at ease with children. “I dropped my ball,” Bug said. “Let me det it.” “Oh, no; I'll get you another one. Don't go back,” Burgess urged. “Do you know it is very rude to look into windows. Let's never tell anybody we did it; nor ever, ever do it again. Will you remember?” “Umph humph! I mean, yes, sir! I won't fornever do it again, nor tell nobody.” Bug buttoned up his lips for a sphinx-like secrecy. “Nobody but Dennie. And I may fordet it for her.” “Yes, forget it, and we'll go away up the river and see other things. Bug, what do you say when you want to keep from doing wrong?” Bug looked up confidingly. “I ist say, 'Dod, be merciless to me, a sinner'.” “Why not merciful, Bug?” “Tause! If He's merciful it's too easy and I'm no dooder,” Bug said, wisely. “Who told you the difference?” Burgess asked. “Vic. He knows a lot. I wish I had my ball, but let's go up the river.” “Out of the mouths of babes,” Burgess murmured and hugged the little one close to him. Victor Burleigh was in the little balcony of the dome late that afternoon fixing a defective wiring. Through the open windows he could see the skyline in every direction. The far-reaching gray prairie, overhung by its dome of amethyst bordered round with opal and rimmed with jasper, seemed in every blending tint and tone to call him back to Norrie. The west bluff above the old Kickapoo Corral in the autumn, the glen full of shadow-flecked light under the tender young April leaves, the December landscape as it lay beyond Dr. Fenneben's study windows--these belonged to Elinor. And all of them were blended in this vision of inexpressible grandeur, unfolded to him now from the dome's high vantage place. “Twice Norrie has let me hold her in my arms and kiss her,” he mused. “When I do that the third time it must be when there will be no remorse to hound me afterward.” He looked down the winding Walnut toward the whirlpool. “I'd rather swim that water than flounder here.” The sound of footsteps on the rotunda stairs made him turn to see Vincent Burgess just reaching the little balcony of the dome. “I've come to have a word with you up here,” he said. “We met once before in this rotunda.” “Yes, down there in the arena,” Vic replied, recalling how like a beast he had felt then. “I was a young hyena that day. Bug Buler came just in time to save both of us. There is a comfort in feeling we can learn something. I've needed books and college professors to temper me to courtesy.”