'It's Hannah,' said the boy; and off he raced toward the house, barely saving himself from running into the arms of another person who had turned in at the gate. * * * * * 'Who was the boy who ran round by the espaliers a minute ago? One would scarcely have judged him to be a child of the caretaker.' The man's heart sank with a dull thud: something had told him the answer before it came. 'Child!' The lawyer looked puzzled. 'I did not see one. No children have any business in this garden; neither is there any caretaker here. The house has been shut up altogether since the old servant you called Hannah died, eleven years ago.' They had reached the veranda. The westering sun had faded off the windows. It was easy to see that the house was empty. The shutters were up within, and the panes dark and weather-stained. Birds had built their nests undisturbed about the chimney stacks. The hearthstones had long been cold. 'My client is willing to purchase the property on the terms originally proposed,' the lawyer was saying. 'He contemplates investing in it as a building site. Of course the timber would have to be felled--' A breeze passed through the treetops like a shudder. The younger man interposed:-- 'I am sorry you should have had the trouble of coming here, but I have decided to keep the old place after all--stick and stone. It is not right it should go out of the family. I must pull my affairs together as well as I can without that.' The little phantom of his dead boyhood was to suffer no eviction. THE CLEAREST VOICE BY MARGARET SHERWOOD The little business frown which John Wareham usually wore only at his office, and put off as he put on his hat in starting for home, lingered that evening, persisting through the long street-car ride, the walk past rows of suburban houses, and even to the brook at the foot of the hill below his home. Here it vanished, for the brook marked the spot where the world stopped, and Alice began. He watched with a meditative happy smile the rough stone fence which bordered this bit of meadow land, with the trailing woodbine and clematis that made it a thing of beauty; and, as he climbed the hill, the deepening color in the sunset clouds, and the notes of a wood thrush from the forest edge not far away, became part of a deep sense of harmony, breaking a mood of anxiety and fear.