She followed him out into the hall, and then through the doors he unlocked into the apartments of the mysterious “Mr. Linkhaw.” The first room disclosed itself, when the gas was lit, to be similar to David’s in size, but all else was strangely different. The Turkey red carpet was brilliant, almost garish, in its newness, and the ceiling was covered with a bright pink paper. All round three sides were broad divans, heaped with soft red cushions and downy pillows. No chairs were to be seen. More singular still, the walls were crowded with the stuffed heads of animals--bisons, bears, moose, elks, antelopes, wolves, and endless varieties of deer. Vestalia gazed at these trophies of the chase with surprise. “Linkhaw is a mighty hunter before the Lord,” Mosscrop explained. “Yon is the bedroom. It is fairly carpeted with the skins of tigers, lions, leopards, and such like beasts. If you dream of jungles and Noah’s ark to-night, and don’t like it, we’ll throw them all out in the morning.” “But what am I doing in this Mr. Link-haw’s rooms?” inquired the girl. “I don’t understand it at all. Suppose he should come?” David laughed lightly. “It’s a far cry from Uganda to Dunstan’s Inn. Or maybe he’s in the Hudson Bay Territory. It’s a year and more since I knew of his whereabouts. The most unheard-of and God-forgotten wilderness on earth--that’s where you may always count on his being, unless he has learned of some still more impossible and repellent wild, just discovered, in the meantime. He is an old friend and school-fellow of mine, and leaves his keys with me. I just have a look at the place now and then, to keep the laundress up to the mark.” He passed on into the bedroom, struck a light, and threw a scrutinising glance round. “You’ll be needing fresh sheets and the like,” he said, returning. “I’ll bring them.” He came back with an armful of linen, and heaped it on the bed. “Now you’re right as a trivet,” he cried, cheerily. “Everything has been aired. And now I’ll be waiting for you to come back to me, with the pretty little slippers. Mind, I’m capable of great excesses in drink if you delay over-long.” Vestalia’s delay was inconsiderable. They sat for an hour or more, she with the dainty new footgear on the fender, he, lounging low in his chair, stretching out his own feet close to the rail beside hers. “I could wish it were winter,” he mused, once, “so that we might have a fire. We have an old saying about two pairs of slippers on the hearth. I never thought before what homely beauty there was in it. Ah, there’ll be cool nights coming on now, and then we’ll start a blaze. But even with a black grate, it is the dearest evening of my life.” “And of mine,” responded the girl.