“What was that important thing you wanted to say?” asked Miss Farrington, after several minutes of silence, save for the hoofs and the runners and the bells. “Oh, it wasn’t of any importance! I mean it will keep. I--er--I was thinking of something else.” “I think you have gone far enough,” said she, innocently, looking over her shoulder in the direction of home. Maybe the return would loosen his obdurate tongue. His heart stopped beating and lay a leaden thing in his breast. Had he, then, gone too far? What had he said? Oh, why had he come out with this lovely being, the mere sight of whom was enough to make one cast all restraint to the winds and declare in thunderous tones that he loved her? “I think that we’d better go back,” he said, and turned so quickly that he nearly upset the sleigh. “Your mother will be anxious.” “Yes; when one is accountable to one’s mother one has to remember time. I suppose it is different when one is accountable to a--” “Father?” said Littlewood, asininely. “No; that wasn’t the word I wanted.” “A-a-aunt?” Could Mildred love him if he gave many more such proofs of being an abject idiot? “No; husband is what I want.” Littlewood’s brain swam. He had been tempted once too often. This naïve girl had innocently played into his hands, and now the Rubicon must be crossed, even if its angry waters engulfed him. “Pardon me, Miss--er--Mildred,”--he did not say Mildewed this time,--“if I twist your words into another meaning, but if you--er--want a husband--do you think I would do?” A head nestled on his shoulder, a little hand was in his, and when he passed the Farrington mansion neither he nor she knew it. XXXIII MY TRUTHFUL BURGLAR I had an experience with a burglar night before last. My family are all away, and I have been living alone in the house, a detached villa in New Jersey, for upward of a month. Several burglaries have occurred in the vicinity. Night before last I was awakened about four o’clock by a noise made by a clicking door, and opening my eyes, I saw a smooth-faced, determined-looking man at my bedside. I did not cry out, nor hide under the bedclothes, nor do any of the conventional things that one does when a burglar comes to him. I looked at him calmly for a moment, and then I said, “How d’ do?” An expression of surprise passed over his intelligent features, but he said mechanically, “Pretty well, thank you. And you?” “Oh, I’m as well as could be expected under the circumstances. Are you the burglar who has been doing this village?” “I am,” said he, drawing up a chair and sitting down. “Why don’t you deny it?” I asked. I wasn’t afraid. He amused me, this nonchalant burglar. “Well, because I’m not ashamed of my profession, for one reason, and mainly because I was brought up by my father to tell the truth.” “You tell the truth, and yet you are a burglar. How can you reconcile those facts?”