Evelyn Porter, who had come out for the walk she had been taking every afternoon since the beginning of her father's illness, stopped at the narrow aisle which had been trampled in the snow-piled sidewalk to watch an adventurous lineman scale an icy telephone pole. There is a vintage of the North that is more stimulating than any that comes out of Southern vineyards. It brings a glow to the cheeks, a sparkle to the eyes, and a nimbleness to the tongue which no product of the winepress ever gives. It is a wine that makes the heart leap and the blood tingle. It is distilled in the great ice-clasped seas of the North, and the pine and balsam of snowy woods add their quintessence to it; it tickles no palate but is assimilated directly into the blood of the brave and strong; it is the wine of youth, of perpetual youth. Evelyn felt the joy of it to-day, her heart leaped with it,--it was a delight to be abroad in the pure, cold air. Her coloring was freshly accented. The remote Scotch grandmother who conferred it upon her, across years of migration, would have rejoiced in it; where the Irish strain maintained its light of humor in her blue eyes, the gray mist of the Scotch moors still held its own. There are women who are dominated by their clothes; but Evelyn Porter was not one of them. Her dark green skirt might have belonged to any other girl, but it would not have swayed in just the same way to any other step; and her toque and cape of sable would have lost their distinction on any other head and shoulders. Her father's convalescence was only a matter of time and care; he had withstood the fever better than the physicians had thought possible, and there was no question of his restoration to health. It was good to be free of the anxious strain, and the keen air was like a tonic to her happiness. Saxton recognized her as he jumped over the drifted snow at the curb to the path. His face, where it was visible between his cap and collar, was red from the cold. "They say freezing to death's an easy way,--but I don't believe I'd prefer it." "Oh, it's you, is it? I wondered who the busy man was." She was interested in the lineman, the points of whose climbers were shaking down the ice coating of the pole as he ascended. "Won't you order that man to come down? It isn't nice to make him risk his life for a wire or two." "He's not my man," said John, beating his hands together, "he's fixing telephone wires, and besides, he's not taking any chances." Evelyn half turned away to continue her walk, still with her eyes on the lineman. "Poor fellow; it must be very cold up there." "Yes, polar expeditions are usually that way." "Wretched man, to pun about a human life in peril!" The lineman was sitting on one of the cross beams, and Evelyn started ahead, Saxton following. "Is that the overcoat?" she asked, over her shoulder. "What overcoat?" "The one that's in the newspapers. Aren't you the man in the gray ulster who runs the trolleys?"