So when, fresh from the intimacy of this communication with his adored and with the letter in his hand, he entered the sitting-room at that early hour he was not overjoyed to find the housekeeper there ahead of him. And her first sentence showed that she had been awaiting his coming. “Good mornin', Albert,” she said. “I heard you stirrin' 'round up in your room and I came down here so's you and I could talk together for a minute without anybody's disturbin' us. . . . Humph! I guess likely you didn't sleep any too well last night, did you?” Albert shook his head. “Not too well, Rachel,” he replied. “I shouldn't wonder. Well, I doubt if there was too much sleep anywheres in this house last night. So you're really goin' to war, are you, Albert?” “Yes. If the war will let me I certainly am.” “Dear, dear! . . . Well, I--I think it's what Robert Penfold would have done if he was in your place. I've been goin' over it and goin' over it half the night, myself, and I've come to that conclusion. It's goin' to be awful hard on your grandma and grandfather and me and Labe, all us folks here at home, but I guess it's the thing you'd ought to do, the Penfold kind of thing.” Albert smiled. “I'm glad you think so, Rachel,” he said. “Well, I do, and if I'm goin' to tell the truth I might as well say I tried terrible hard to find some good reasons for thinkin' 'twan't. I did SO! But the only good reasons I could scare up for makin' you stay to home was because home was safe and comf'table and where you was goin' wan't. And that kind of reasonin' might do fust-rate for a passel of clams out on the flats, but it wouldn't be much credit to decent, self-respectin' humans. When General Rolleson came to that island and found his daughter and Robert Penfold livin' there in that house made out of pearls he'd built for her--Wan't that him all over! Another man, the common run of man, would have been satisfied to build her a house out of wood and lucky to get that, but no, nothin' would do him but pearls, and if they'd have been di'monds he'd have been better satisfied. Well. . . . Where was I? . . . Oh yes! When General Rolleson came there and says to his daughter, 'Helen, you come home along of me,' and she says, 'No, I shan't leave him,' meanin' Robert Penfold, you understand--When she says that did Robert Penfold say, 'That's the talk! Put that in your pipe, old man, and smoke it?' No, SIR, he didn't! He says, 'Helen, you go straight home along with your pa and work like fury till you find out who forged that note and laid it onto me. You find that out,' he says, 'and then you can come fetch me and not afore.' That's the kind of man HE was! And they sailed off and left him behind.” Albert shook his head. He had heard only about half of the housekeeper's story. “Pretty rough on him, I should say,” he commented, absently.