This seemed a good reason. But Miss Clement felt that either she--or this boy--was being deceived. The Vandal, whose drowsy eyes had scarcely moved from the study of her face since she entered the room, saw the look of disappointment. It was a somewhat petulant expression in which she would not have indulged had her host been twenty years older. But he saw it so clearly that he was moved to sympathy. With all the joy and enthusiasm of a great idea, he exclaimed: "My father may know all about her. I will ask him to tell you!" A chill of horror swept up Miss Clement's spine. She suddenly realized what awful mischief a youthful savage--either from ignorance or perversity--might accomplish. She stood up. "No! Don't mention it to him--nor to anybody." "Why not?' "Because you mustn't." She could see, in the Vandal's face as he looked up at her, that he enjoyed this--to him--unaccountable fright. He even laughed. "There's nothing to be afraid of." "No, of course not!" And she tried to smile. "But promise me you will not ask your father, nor anybody else." To this super-sensitive lady there appeared in his uplifted eyes a cruel, triumphant delight, as he said--"Why did you ask if you don't want to know about her?" "Merely in the way of conversation." And she added, with her sweetest smile--"merely from a friendly interest. You are a nice boy, and you understand, I am sure." He nodded; but his eyes, in their slumbrous wisdom, seemed almost contemptuous. "Promise me," she insisted. "Promise me you will say nothing about it to anybody." "Yes, I promise." "You are a nice little boy--and I must go, now. I will call again in a day or two. Good by." He bowed as he said good-by. Then he followed her out into the hall, ran before her and held the door wide open. As she passed out he bowed again; the same deferential obeisance with which he had first greeted her--as from Louis XIV to the Queen of Spain. * * * * * As Miss Clement crossed the common on her way home she saw a group of children looking skywards, and she heard the word "Eagle." She stopped, and also looked up. And as she looked, and watched the bird, floating tranquilly in the upper air, in a wide, slow circle, majestically, with no apparent effort, so high above the earth that he might be a visitor from another planet--she recalled the words of her recent host: "What's the use of crawling about on the earth like a bug? I'd rather be a bird." * * * * *