"I'm a goin' up to Jim Doggett's, Miss Lucy," Mr. Lindsay announced coolly after the supper that evening,--"to set ontel bedtime, and I want to ask you, ef you haven't got no objections, to jest leave the hall door onlocked ontel I come back: I can git in then without disturbin' anybody." "Why, Mr. Lindsay, of course I will," fluttered Miss Lucy, "but ef you ain't a goin' to stay late, I'll set up and have a fire for you to warm your feet by." "I thank you, Miss Lucy," Mr. Lindsay answered in the same frigidly polite tones: "I won't be gone long, but I don't want to put nobody to any trouble fer me, what time I'll be here. I wish you good evenin'." Miss Lucy stood in dumb wonderment on the porch until the splash of Mr. Lindsay's feet in the melting snow no longer reached her ear. What was the matter with him that he spoke to her as one stranger to another? Unheeding the mud puddles in which he set his feet, Mr. Lindsay neared the tiny cottage Vaughn Castle furnished Jim Doggett. An owl quavered in the top of one of the ragged elms, when he paused on the step to remove his overshoes, and the bird's weird cry was not more despondent than the silent wail of the man's heart. "She's a settin' there, now," he chafed, "a smilin' in the coals, a thenkin' about old Brock!" But he was mistaken; Miss Lucy was crying in her pillow. Jim and Henrietty made Mr. Lindsay kindly welcome, but the plump child with the exquisitely molded features drew back the dainty chin that reminded one of nothing so much as a rosy peach, and looked shyly at him through the long curling black lashes of her dreamy brown eyes. "Have you gone back on me too, Katie?" Mr. Lindsay's look of reproach brought the baby flying to his chair to crawl up in his lap. "Me love Missa Linney," she lisped: "is 'oo dot a pitty f'ower for Tatie?" "You'll never lose out with Katie, Mr. Lindsay," laughed her father, as the child began ecstatically to kiss the rose pictured on the bit of pasteboard her friend fished from an inside pocket, "ef you keep on a brengin' her flowers and picturs of flowers." "I didn't believe she'd go back on me too," Mr. Lindsay murmured, with his cheek on the little one's red-brown hair. "Been anybody at your house today?" asked astute Henrietty. "Jest old man Brock." "Did he stay all day?" "Yes, staid until milkin' time." "Wuz he primped up?" persisted Henrietty, with a glance at Jim. "Yes, in an inch of his life," scoffed Mr. Lindsay, with the high collar in mind: "ever'theng he had on, as fur as I could see, wuz new. Miss Lucy," he concluded with burning sarcasm, "she told him he looked like a preacher!" "Must 'a' been a courtin' rig," reflected Jim. "Well Jim," expostulated Henrietty, "and poor Callie not been in her grave more'n six months! Ef I wuz Mr. Brock, I'd let my wife's tracks rain out before I took to courtin'!" Mr. Lindsay laughed--a mirthless jeering laugh.