The sun set and the light faded. Still no Ethan. A brief interval for supper at six, and the three returned to the parlor. Mrs. Gano manifested a hitherto unsuspected leaning towards illumination. The branch candlesticks, for the first time within the memory of man, held each its triple flame, and a shaded lamp shed a crimson glow over the centre table. She made an excursion into the hall, and complained that the Moorish lamp burned faint and insufficiently. She came back, saying: "It will seem cold after France," and with her own hands she lit the ready-laid fire in the grate. Later, she went to the front door and objected to the absence of the moon. "It's really dangerous coming up those steps in the pitch-dark, especially since the second stone was broken." At half-past eight she shut her book suddenly. "Val, couldn't you get your father's new-fangled lantern--that patent incandescent contrivance--and set it lighted at the top of the steps?" "Y-yes, ma'am, if you think it won't look funny. It's like the head-light of an engine." "Funny? Not at all. There's nothing your cousin Ethan dislikes so much as the dark--unless he's greatly altered." So Val got the lantern, and set it where the wide diverging rays flared out across the street, as a fan of zodiacal light opens gaudily across the Milky Way on arctic nights, leaving travellers on the ways of this world but little illumined, for all the glory of heaven. So with the patent incandescent lantern. It picked out the whitewashed hitching-post with an ostentation of good-will, flooded the farther side of the street, and fell with a kind of fierce satisfaction upon the ugly new wooden tenements opposite. But this side, gutter, and gate, and little flight of worn and broken steps, were left in denser darkness. Val came in, complaining for the first time at the delay. "I hope poor father isn't waiting all these hours for his supper." "Oh, he'll go to the hotel, you may be sure." Mrs. Gano did not speak as if the thought brought her particular satisfaction. "It's getting cold; I just wish he'd come home. I don't believe there's the least use expecting cousin Ethan before to-morrow." But when Emmie, half an hour later, asked for serious advice: "Now, _do_ you think I'd have time to eat another apple before he comes?" "I wouldn't risk it," said Val; "we'll tell fortunes with the seeds you've got already." The two girls sat on the moth-eaten velvet sofa. Emmie had spread her apple-seeds out on last evening's _Mioto Gazette_, and rubbed her fruity fingers on a diminutive pocket-handkerchief. "Now I've named them," she said, in a whisper. Val pointed at random: "One I love, two I love, three I love, I say; Four I love with all my heart, five I cast away; Six he loves, seven she loves, eight they both love; Nine he comes, ten he tarries, Eleven he courts--" "Oh," sighed Emmie, "only one more needed."