“A man! Then why do you stay out here in the dusk? Who was it? You are laughing,—it must have been Adam playing a trick on us!” “Adam! Oh, no, it is the man I am going to marry! Brooke Lawton—Tom Brownell! I believe, by the way, you have never before been properly introduced!” and the next flash saw three figures, followed by a joyous dog, scudding toward the house under a burst of rain. * * * * * While the storm raged it was impossible either for Brownell to regain his companions or to communicate with them in any way, while the probabilities pointed to the chance of their having returned to Bisbee’s stable for shelter at the first signs of the storm. At the supper table Lucy’s radiance was so dazzling that no one could pretend to ignore it. The Cub, to whom Brownell was of course a stranger, was inclined to be resentful and clumsily sarcastic, but as the elder man had both tact and magnetism, he speedily concluded that it was better to have a new friend than an unnecessary enemy. Mrs. Lawton and Miss Keith were made partakers of the news by mere inference before the formal words were spoken, and Brownell at once became a friend of the family, even before the matter of the keys and his diligence in their interest came up. Brownell took the bits of metal from his pocket and laid them on the table beside him, as he told of his idea that, being paired and of the type that is used by safety-vault companies, they might in some way be connected with the personal belongings of Mrs. Lawton and Brooke; how that by chance he had seen keys of a similar pattern in the pocket of a friend, but, in locating the company, had found the name given by the man renting the box to be West and not Lawton! “That was grandmother’s maiden name, and this is the West homestead,” said Brooke, in a tense whisper. “The keys must have something to do with father and all of us, if we can only fathom how!” “If West is a family name, the rest must unravel in time,” said Brownell, looking eagerly toward Adam Lawton, who, sitting as usual in his wheel-chair at the foot of the table, had turned slightly toward the young man, idly fingering the keys, his eyes fixed on the distance. The circular storm, that had veered off for a time, now returned with renewed fury. Pam jumped into Lucy’s lap and hid her head under the table-cloth. Miss Keith fled to her room and bounced into the middle of her feather-bed, to “keep her feet off the floor,” as she said. Lucy held Tom tightly by the hand, while even Mrs. Lawton and Brooke grew pale and the Cub feigned an indifference that he was far from feeling, for the effect of the air charged with electricity was palpable and not to be ignored. There came a moment when a series of explosions followed one another like pistol shots, next a scathing flash and a deafening report, and at the same instant a sound of ripping and tearing in front of the house, while a sulphurous odour filled the room.