Well, but it was a snug little cabin! The mist-wraiths might drift by the window, might even pause to thrust their spectral faces against the pane, but it mattered nothing to those who were safe and snug within. Aunt Zillah cooked her special stew for supper, and served it with potatoes baked in the coals, raised biscuit, and honey and dainties for dessert. Keefe had brought out his borrowed guitar and kept the room ringing with his melodies. The girls saw that the occasion was to be a festive one, and put on the brightest frocks they could find in their trunks. Then, with the fire leaping and the candles and lamps lighted and supper laid out with the pink dishes and the white doilies, the place was charming indeed. To Miss Zillah, for the first time in her life removed from oversight of her elder sister, and playing at being the mother of a family, it was an experience that made her shy, middle-aged heart leap within her. To Carin, used to luxury and beauty and her parent’s unceasing care, it was an adventure in independence; to Azalea, accustomed to changes, to people of many sorts, to both rough and smooth living, it was one more chapter in a book destined to be filled with curious incidents. To Keefe—but let him speak for himself. “This place,” he said, “looks to me singularly like Paradise. My own particular habitation is as damp and cold as the Mammoth Cave. My bed is done up in oilskins, and my easel is under the bed. Every stick of wood I have is drenched, and the field mice have got at my food.” “Poor orphan,” laughed Carin, and then stopped on the word, wondering if she had not spoken the truth concerning him. He had told nothing of himself, save that he hoped to be an artist, and that he already had studied at the New York Academy of Design. “Well,” he retorted, giving no heed to her embarrassment, “I congratulated myself when I borrowed that tent from Mr. Rowantree. I saw it wouldn’t keep water out. I said to myself, ‘The first time we have a downpour I’ll have to take refuge with the nearest neighbor.’ I saw to it that you were that neighbor. To-night, of course, I shall put in an application for the guest chamber at Mis’ Cassie McEvoy’s, and I’ll sleep in the room with the medicine-bottle decoration, but until the clock tells me it is really night, here I stay. Don’t I, Miss Pace?” “Indeed you do,” she returned. “The laborer is worthy of his hire.” She had got over the slight prejudice she felt against him at first meeting. He was too obliging, too amiable, too wistful, for her to keep him at a distance. Miss Zillah’s heart was a particularly soft one, though for conscience sake she could be stern. “I hear you had only one pupil to-day,” she said to the girls when they were seated at the table.