It took Dick a few seconds to comprehend the truth and to consider what next to do. He turned and struggled out of the shop and through the crowd in the street. As he came finally free of contact, he glanced towards Palace Street, and saw the soldiers with the lantern, coming around the corner of the St. Valier garden. He dashed immediately through the gate in the side wall, crossed an open space between snow-covered evergreens, and bounded up a half dozen steps to the rear porch of the St. Valier mansion. From this porch a large door led into the house. Dick boldly gave four quick, loud knocks. As the lantern's light appeared at the gateway in the side wall, the door of the house gaped wide, and Dick stepped at once into a dim, spacious hallway, which led to several rooms and a staircase. While the servant closed the way behind Dick, and looked inquiringly at him, a door near the farther end of the hallway opened, admitting from a brilliant parlor a noise of merry conversation, and then a woman, who stopped in the centre of the hall, and looked at Dick with the surprise due to his sudden intrusion. It was Catherine de St. Valier. CHAPTER IX. THE INCIDENTS OF A SNOWY NIGHT. There was a moment's pause, while Dick hastily tore open the silken bag in his queue and took therefrom the miniature. Then he advanced to her, bowing low, his hunting-cap in one hand, the portrait held out in the other. She glanced at the miniature curiously, then uttered a low exclamation of pleasure, her face suddenly assuming a faint but joyous smile, and took the portrait, her fingers touching his as she did so. "When I said I would get it back for you, in New Jersey," quoth Dick, while she looked affectionately at the miniature, "I didn't think to take so long a time." She now looked from the portrait to him. "Then you are the young gentleman who left the stage-coach, to go after the robbers?" she said, in a tone showing that she had not recognized him at first. Dick bowed. "I would have returned it to you in New York, but--something hindered me." In contemplating the fine lines of her face, and the dark lustre of her eyes, Dick heeded not the possibility that his seekers might even now be on the porch. "How can I thank you, sir?" she said, her look and tone having, from the circumstances, a tenderness such as she had not before evinced to any man. Perhaps this very exception in Dick's favor, though due to the occasion, separated him at once and forever in her mind from all other men, and made it natural that he, on whom she had scarcely even looked, should acquire in an instant a first place in her thoughts. Dick had read enough to be able to make such fine speeches as were seriously affected and seriously taken in those days. He answered: "By permitting me to worship you."