Hampstead cuddled the girl closer, and his eye abandoned the page to look down the bridge of his nose into distance. "Why?" he asked presently. "Oh, because," said Tayna, with a little shiver of eagerness, "I can hardly wait." Hampstead’s eyes wandered to his motto on the wall. The eyes of the boy followed and spelled out the letters wonderingly, but in silence. "We must be able to wait," said John, squeezing Tayna again. "It’s a long, long way; but if we just keep on keeping on, why, after a while we are there, you know." Tayna sighed and reached up a round, plump arm till it encircled Hampstead’s neck, as she asked, still more shyly: "And when you are President, every one will know just how good and great you are, and they won’t call you awkward nor—nor homely any more, will they?" A flush and a chuckle marked John’s reception of this query, after which he observed hastily and a bit apprehensively: "Say, you wet little goldfishes! Remember that you are never, never, now or any time, howsoever odd I bear myself, to breathe a word to anybody, not to a single soul, not to your mamma or your papa or your Sunday-school teacher or anybody, of all these nice little play secrets which we have between ourselves." An instant seriousness came over the children’s faces. "Cross my heart," murmured Tayna, with a twitch of her slender finger across her breast. "And hope to die," added Dick, with a funeral solemnity, as he completed Tayna’s cross by a vertical movement of a stubby thumb in the direction of his own wishbone of a breast. Hampstead looked relieved. "But," affirmed Tayna stoutly, "they are not play secrets. They are real secrets. Aren’t they?" John looked up at his motto again. "Yes," he said in a low, determined voice. "They are real secrets." "And," half-declared, half-questioned Dick, "if you aren’t President, you are going to be some other kind of a very great man? "Aren’t you?" the boy persisted, when Hampstead was silent. "Tell you to-morrow," laughed John. "Good night, ghosts!" and with a swift assault of his lips upon the cheeks of either, he gently impelled them toward the door. "Good night, your Excellency!" giggled Tayna. "Good night, my counselors," responded Hampstead, reaching for his book. An hour later Hampstead was still reading. Another hour later he was still reading. But something like a quarter of an hour beyond that, when it might have been, say, near half-past eleven, he was not reading. He was turning his head strangely from side to side and digging a knuckle into his eyes. A surprising thing had happened. He could no longer see the lines upon the page—nor the page itself—nor the book—nor anything!