"Nonsense! Of course he'll come!" she said. But now there was a note of defiant doubt in her voice. "Wait--you must wait. There's a bench somewhere." Fumbling about presently she found it, and together we sat down and again waited in a silence that seemed as if it would never end. The wind was growing more brisk and the clouds were thickening, hurrying across the irregular roof of the house like frightened sheep over a wigwag fence, and herding together in a rapidly growing mass beyond. There was a storm brewing; I could feel it in my bones. At length, when more than an hour had passed I could bear it no longer. "Do you intend to wait all night for that--that servant?" I at length demanded in a fierce undertone. "I'm going to wait a hundred years!" replied she. "If he got that letter he will come, servant or no servant." "Peaches, you're a silly goose, and you have no consideration for me," I said. "My feelings are deeply wounded, and I'm quite worn out, what with two such nights in succession!" And with that I felt in my pocket for my handkerchief preparatory to beginning to cry. As I did so my fingers seized upon quite another object, which I drew forth with a sickening sense of what I had done--or rather of what I had most miserably failed to do, for the object which I drew forth was nothing less than the letter which Peaches had intrusted to me the evening before! "Peaches!" I gasped painfully, confession coming hard. "Peaches, I climbed out of my window and risked my neck last night----" "Yes, yes, I know," she said soothingly. "I appreciate it." "But you don't!" I said. "I crossed those terrible ledges and endangered my reputation, to leave a set of directions for making a slip-on sweater in his room!" "You what?" said Peaches, now thoroughly alive. "Galadia sent them!" I endeavored to explain. "And it was my mistake. Here was your letter all the time!" For a long period of silence I awaited the storm of her wrath. But it didn't come. Instead she drew a long sobbing breath of relief. "Thank heaven he didn't turn me down!" was all she said. And then slowly we made our way back to the house, our footless errand ended. Peaches stepped inside and feeling for the electric button flooded the room with light. "No need for secrecy now," she remarked, "so we don't have to break our necks over the furniture as we----" Her voice broke off into a shrill little scream, and raising her hand she pointed to the mantelpiece. The frame was there, but the Madonna of the Lamp was gone! XIII At first I could scarcely believe my eyes--but there was the space where once the beautiful picture had hung, the gape showing the paneling behind all too plainly. Aghast I turned to Peaches, who continued to stare. "What has happened to it?" I asked in an awed tone. "Has it been stolen?"