"How ever did"--I began. "Hush! Come into the sitting-room," she said mysteriously. "There's a man in the kitchen!" "A man!" I exclaimed, in agitation. I had warned Marion never to admit a tramp in my absence, and somehow I leaped to the conclusion that she had been imposed upon by a hardened villain. It was a relief to think she was no longer alone. She nodded. "Not an ordinary tramp," she said. "He's the dearest, funniest little old man, with pink cheeks like a baby's, and so clean looking. When he'd had his dinner"---- "You gave him his dinner?" "Certainly I did. You don't suppose I sold it to him? Oh, you needn't look so stern; I'll tell you how it happened. I was just taking my pies out of the oven about eleven o'clock when he knocked at the door and said he'd like to borrow a shovel for a few minutes. About half an hour later I remembered he hadn't brought it back, and when I looked out of the front window there was the top of his head bobbing up and down at the gate. I got on my things in a hurry and went out to see what he was doing, and he was scraping the ice so hard with his back turned to me that I had to shout three times before he heard." "'What's that for?' I called out. 'For you, ma'am,' he answered, turning round with the oddest look. 'For me?' I said. 'Why, I never asked you to dig out our gate.' 'No, ma'am,' he said, 'but when I seen that there sign hung out, I thought to myself that some widow with small children lived here, and it wouldn't be much of a job to dig out her gate. Then when you come to the door I seen I was mistaken, but I thought I'd do it anyway, for it wasn't your fault that you was so young and--and----'" I smiled. "No, I didn't pay him," she protested, the becoming flush on her cheeks deepening. "I offered him a quarter, but he wouldn't take it, so I knew he wasn't trying to flatter me, and I made him come up to the house to get some dinner when he got the gate closed. You should have seen his face when the semaphore went behind the gate-post. He was so delighted that he opened and shut the gate several times to see it work, exclaiming, 'My, my! ain't he got a head! Don't that work beautiful!'" "I suppose you did right to give the poor old chap some dinner," I observed, with a complacent smile. "When he came into the kitchen," she continued, "he said the smell of hot raspberry pies was the most appetizing smell in the whole world. He said his aunt used to make them when he was a boy, and once he stole a whole one and ate it, and ever since when he tries to feel sorry the remembrance of the delightful sensation in his insides overpowers his conscience and makes him feel glad. Of course I gave him one for dinner, and I told him he might have another if he wished, but he declared that one was enough--that no mortal could stand more than a certain amount of bliss. Just fancy, Henry; he says his aunt's pies weren't a circumstance to mine!" "The old flatterer!" I exclaimed.