Then with a good-night she hurried to her room and tried to sleep. But the excitement of the day and evening had driven her drowsiness away, and the twitter of birds was heard outside her window, and the early sun was stealing into her room before she fell into a troubled sleep, in which she dreamed, sometimes of Herbert, sometimes of Fred Lansing, but oftener of the scene of the morning, which she seemed to be living over again, with this difference: that now it was her father’s bank the mob surrounded, with darker, angrier faces than she had ever seen before, while she stood in their midst alone, vainly trying to stem the tide, which bore her at last off her feet and away into darkness and unconsciousness, from which she at last awoke bathed in perspiration, with a cry upon her lips for Herbert to help her. CHAPTER XI KEEPING THE SECRET It took Herbert some time to reach home, the night was so fine and he had so much to think about. The run on his father’s bank was a mortification which, now that he had time to think, smarted more than it had before. That his father should have been treated thus was an outrage, and that he should have been helped by a bank so much smaller than his own, was something of a humiliation. And still he was glad that help had come from Mr. Grey, and at Louie’s instigation. It might make matters easier for him when his engagement became known. Then there crossed his mind a thought that possibly he had been rash in proposing to Louie just as he had done; not that he did not love her, for he did, and always should, but he had about him enough honor to feel that it was wrong to bind her to secrecy because he feared his father’s displeasure, and then suddenly he felt his face grow very red when the ugly thought presented itself that in four years he might change his mind, with all the advantages he should have of seeing the world. “I am a villain to think that. I shall never change,” he said, as he came in sight of the veranda on which Fred Lansing was sitting, enjoying the moonlight and wondering why Herbert was gone so long. At sight of him Herbert’s thought took another turn. Fred was evidently pleased with Louie—“mashed” Herbert called it. He was going to see her that afternoon. He was cold-blooded, it was true, but then he might warm up under the spell of Louie’s beauty, and make things awkward by proposing to her himself. “I believe I’ll tell him. I can trust him,” he thought, and in response to Fred’s “Hallo! old fellow, what have you been doing all this time?” he went half way up the steps and seating himself on one of them, replied, “Been offering myself to the prettiest girl in the world!” “You have!” Fred exclaimed, his feet dropping suddenly from the railing where they had been resting, while he straightened himself in his chair and looked his surprise at Herbert, who answered: