With the first creaking sound of our steps in the front hall "Little Sister" came gliding down the stairway with the stark-faced laddie clutching close at her sash. All the sparkle and spangle were gone from the girl. Her eyes were like two bruises on the flesh of a calla lily. Slipping one ice-cold tremulous hand into mine she closed down her other frightened hand over the two. "I'm so very glad you've come," she whispered huskily. "Mr. Lennart isn't any comfort to me at all to-night--and Mary was the only sister I had." Her voice caught suddenly with a rasping sob. "You and Mr. Sagner have always been so kind to me," she plunged on blindly, with soft-drooping eyelids, "and I shall probably never see either of you again. We are all going home to-morrow. And I expect to be married in July to a boy at home." Her icy fingers quickened in mine like the bloom-burst of a sun-scorched Jacqueminot. "You--expect--to--be--married--in--July to--a--boy--at--home?" cried Sagner. The awful slicing quality in his voice brought Lennart's dreadful face peering out through a slit in the library curtains. "Hush!" I signaled warningly to Sagner. But again his venomous question ripped through the quiet of the house. "You--expected--all--the--time--to--be--married--in--July?" "Why, yes," said the girl, with the faintest dimpling flicker of a smile. "Won't you congratulate me?" Very softly she drew her right hand away from me and held it out whitely to Sagner. "Excuse me," said Sagner, "but I have just--washed--my--hands." "What?" stammered the girl. "W-h-a-t?" "Excuse--me," said Sagner, "but I have just--washed my hands." Then, bowing very, very low, like a small boy at his first dancing-school, Sagner passed from the house. When I finally succeeded in steering my shaking knees and flopping feet down the long front steps and the pleasant, rose-bordered path, I found Sagner waiting for me at the gateway. Under the basking warmth of that mild May night his teeth were chattering as with an ague, and his ravenous face was like the face of a man whose soul is utterly glutted, but whose body has never even so much as tasted food and drink. I put both my hands on his shoulders. "Sagner," I begged, "if there is anything under God's heaven that you want to-night--go and get it!" He gave a short, gaspy laugh and wrenched himself free from me. "There is nothing _under_ God's heaven--to-night--that I want--except Madge Hubert," he said. In another instant he was gone. With a wh-i-r and a wh-i-s-h and a snow-white fragrance, his trail cut abruptly through the apple-bush hedge. Then like a huge, black, sweet-scented sponge the darkening night seemed to swoop down and wipe him right off the face of the earth. Very softly I knelt and pressed my ear to the ground. Across the young, tremulous, vibrant greensward I heard the throb-throb-throb of a man's feet--_running_. * * * * * Transcriber's note: