"If Miss Adare will be at the post-office at four o'clock this afternoon she will greatly oblige the writer of these lines and perhaps benefit a person who is dear to her." The post-office being a tolerably safe place in case of felonious attack, I was on the spot at five minutes before the hour. In that particular town it occupied a corner of a brick building which also gave shelter to the bank and a milliner's establishment. As the village hotel was opposite, I advertised my arrival by studying a display of hats which warranted the attention before going inside to invest in stamps. As I was the only applicant for this necessary of life, the swarthy, undersized young man who served me made kindly efforts at entertainment while "delivering the goods," as he expressed it. "English, ain't you?" I said, as usual, that I was a Canadian. He smiled at his own perspicacity. "Got your number, didn't I? All you Canucks have the same queer way o' talkin'. Two or three in the jam-factory here--only they're French." I knew some one had entered behind me, and, turning away from the wicket, I found the person I had expected. Mr. Stacy Grainger, clad jauntily in a gray spring suit, lifted a soft felt hat. He went to his point without introductory greeting. "It's good of you to have come. Perhaps we could talk better if we walked up the street. There's no one to know us or to make it awkward for you." Walking up the street he made his errand clear to me. I had partly guessed it before he said a word. I had guessed it from his pallor, from something indefinably humbled in the way he bore himself, and from the worried light in his romantic eyes. Being so much taller than I, he had to stoop toward me as he talked. He knew, he said, what had happened on the train. Some of it he had wrung from his secretary, Strangways, and the rest had been written him by Mrs. Brokenshire. He had been so furious at first that he might have been called insane. In order to give himself the pleasure of kicking Strangways out he had refused to accept his resignation, and had I not been a woman he would have sought revenge on me. He had been the more frantic because until getting his first note from Mrs. Brokenshire he hadn't known where she was. To have the person dearest to him in the world swept off the face of the earth after she was actually under his protection was enough to drive a man mad. Having acquiesced in this, I considered it no harm to add that if I had known the business on which I was setting out I should have hardly dared that day to take the train for Boston. Once on it, however, and in speech with Mrs. Brokenshire, it had seemed that there was no other course before me. "Quite so," he agreed, somewhat to my surprise. "I see that now. He's not altogether an ass, that fellow Strangways. I've kept him with me, and little by little--" He broke off abruptly to say: "And now the shoe's on the other foot. That's what I wanted to tell you."