Indications seemed to point in that direction, however. Leon's association with the spirit of the chair became closer and more constant. Night after night I heard him murmuring in the darkness, and the soft creak and rustle and whisper of the chair in reply, until the hairs of my neck quivered. There came a night when the heat broke under a pressure of wild wind and rain from the northwest that swept Our Square like an aerial charge. It whirled me, breathless, into No. 7, and pursued me up the stairs, puffing out the light at the top. The Gnome was working. Beside him on a stand rustled a little pile of checks, weighted down. “I'm going to leave a legacy,” he said gayly. “Will you be my executor? You'll have to find Her, you know.” “Ask me ten years from now, if I'm alive,” I answered. “What's to-night? Reading?” “Sleep, for you. You look done up. Take the couch and a blanket.” I took them and, with them, what I had originally planned to be a brief nap, for there was medicine to be given now. When I woke up the room was dark. It seemed to me that a cold draft had passed over and roused me. Above the rush and whistle of the wind I could hear the chair whispering. “My Heart! Oh, my Heart! Have you come back?” pleaded the Gnome's voice in the silence. Then all the blood in my body made one great leap and stopped. The chair had sobbed. “It has seemed so often that I could stretch out my hand and touch you,” went on the piteous, quiet voice from the bed. “But you were never there. And my soul is tired with waiting and longing.” The chair rustled again with the sound of release from weight. There was a broken cry of love and fear and gladness that was of this and not the other world, and I knew without seeing that it was a woman of flesh and blood who lay on the Gnome's breast, covering his face with her kisses. “Darling fool! Darling fool! Why didn't you tell me?” she sobbed. “Why didn't you tell me that you loved me?” “I thought that I did,” said the Gnome, and I started at the changed voice, for it had suddenly taken on life and vigor. “I thought I told you in every word and look that you were all my world.” There was a pause, then: “Who _did_ tell you?” “Mr. MacLachan. He found me at last. He took me by the arm and said: 'Lassie, the love o' you is the life o' him. An' it's going if you don't come back an' save him!' Is it true, dearest one?” she cried passionately. “Tell me I'm not too late.” Then I judged it best to tiptoe quite circumspectly out of the room. On the landing below I met the Little Red Doctor. “Who went up the stairs just now?” he cried. “Love,” said I. “Did you fear it was Death?” MACLACHAN OF OUR SQUARE