Twilight, with her many fairy couriers,--the glowworms, fireflies, and velvety night-moths,--was settling over the paths of Penn Rhyn's garden when the two Quakeresses and the girl, stiff from their long journey, alighted before the Bickley door. The Bickleys were overjoyed to see their sister before brother Shewell's letter was delivered by the stoutest of the guards, who still carried the blunderbuss. After Abram Bickley perused the epistle with knitted brow an air of depression fell on the group. "She is to stay in the country, guarded close, for the summer, and the next summer until this painter fellow is filched from her head," he read to his wife. The figures on the porch, with their background of dim vines and murky bricks, made a night-piece worthy of the brush of Mr. Hogarth. To the girl, tired and distraught, the front of the house seemed to be covered with mocking faces like the masks about the playboard of the Philadelphia theatre. She hated them all with their looks of compassion, scorn, and surprise. The dull-witted Quakeresses were speaking again with her brother-in-law. Their slow-mouthed sentences came to her ears. "I am here like some poor thief awaiting jail," the girl thought, as she looked at them. Then the faces began to fade. She had wandered into a world of fragrant dusk filled with the good-night prayers of closing flowers. She would willingly go to jail for love. There was nothing more beautiful in the world. Each prison bar she would twine with it. Each day and night should be carpeted with it. Her face was raised heavenward to the field of little stars. In the course of events the world in which the Shewells moved learned that Benjamin West had departed for England, and that Betsey Shewell was secreted in a safe country retreat where it would be impossible for him to find her. Sarah Franklin brought to her father's mind his half promise to aid the lovers. "We must bide our time," he said. "Haste trips up its own heels." That night he penned a letter to West in London. In a few months an answer came. When "Pappy" showed it to his family one morning, they almost devoured him with kisses. "Take me with you, father, when you set out for Bickleys," Sarah implored. "I want to be in the plot." "That you shall," he promised her. "There is much to be done first, though, for we must get at old West." "'Twill be like the play, and I shall wear my new mourning mitts," Sarah called, pirouetting in glee. Mrs. Franklin's face was aglow with motherly pride. "Thou shalt wear a new store silk, for the Bickleys be fine feathers at home, I hear." She glanced at "Pappy" for assent, but he was deep in a newspaper. "I will get it out of him," she said, nodding to the daughter knowingly. [Illustration: THE WEST FAMILY IN LONDON]