Shirley recognized them both, one tall and slim, with the slight stoop and characteristic walk of age; the other also tall, but broad-shouldered and erect. She wondered what Peter Bell could be doing out here, calling on his grandfather at this late hour, and then remembered that Peter’s time was so full by day that he must needs make his visits by night. She thought of the mortgage he had spoken of, and surmised that the visit, prolonged past the hour when farmhouses are usually dark and silent, was on business. "Well, well!" called the kindly voice of the old man. "Broke down, have you? Anything we can do? Your lights are brighter than any we can furnish you." Peter came close. "Will the ladies come into the house?" he asked. He could not see who they were. Mrs. Hildreth and Miss Armitage accepted the offer, for the November air was not so mild as it had been during the day, and they had no great confidence in Brant’s ability to repair his own machine. Peter offered a helping hand. When the older ladies were out, he turned to the girl on the front seat. She sprang down, and stood still before him. She had pulled her gray veil closely about her face, and she spoke in a muffled whisper: "Guess who I am." [Illustration: "SHE SPRANG DOWN, AND STOOD STILL BEFORE HIM"] Peter glanced toward Brant, who had now come around into the glare from his own headlights. Peter knew Brant, as anyone must who was included in the entertaining done in the Townsend house. But it had always been many leagues farther to Gay Street from the Hille home on the north side of Worthington Square than from that of Murray and Shirley Townsend on the south side. "I’m afraid I can’t guess," admitted Peter, who thought he knew that Shirley was at home that night, having noted a light in her window when, at nine o’clock, he had mounted his bicycle to make the trip to Grandfather Bell’s. Her figure in the long coat and shrouding veil was not familiar to him, and the whisper had conveyed no note of Shirley’s real tones. "Then you shall never know," the sepulchral whisper assured him, and he found some difficulty in holding his hand from the desire forcibly to remove the provoking veil. The possibility that it was his sister Jane caused him to estimate sharply the height of the figure before him. It was a little too tall for Jane, and Peter was about to hazard a guess that it was one of the least formidable of the girls of Shirley’s set whom he occasionally met at her home, when Brant Hille called out, annoyance sounding in his voice: "You ’d better go in with the others, Shirley--this is going to take time. I ’ve got to put on a new tire--worse luck!" Peter’s fingers grasped the veil and gently pulled it aside from the laughing face beneath, "No wonder you wanted to hide!" he jeered, under his breath. "A working-girl like you, off on midnight larks like this, with to-morrow ahead."