Confused, disappointed, and yet with a curious sense of joy in the joy of the two even now rounding the corner, she leaned back in the brougham. "I'm afraid he'll go to Harvard, anyway," she sighed. IV WHERE THIEVES BREAK IN. One glance at Caroline's shoulders, hunched with caution, the merest profile, indeed, of her tense and noiseless advance up the narrow gravel path, would have convinced the most casual observer that she was bent upon arson, at the least. At the occasional crunch of the gravel she scowled; the well meant effort of a speckled gray hen, escaped from some distant part of the grounds, to bear her company, produced a succession of pantomimic dismissals that alarmed the hen to the point of frenzy, so that her clacks and cackles resounded far beyond the trim hedge that separated the drying-ground from the little kitchen garden. Caroline scowled, turned to shake her fist at the hen, now lumbering awkwardly through the hedge, and sat down heavily on a little bed of parsley. "Nasty old thing!" she gulped, "_anybody_ could've heard me! And I was creeping up so still...." She peered out from behind a dwarf evergreen and made a careful survey of the situation. The big square house stood placid and empty in the afternoon sun; not a cat on the kitchen porch, not a curtain fluttering from an open window. All was neat, quiet and deserted. Caroline set her lips with decision. "We'll pretend there wasn't any hen," she said, in a low voice, "and go on from here, just the same." Rising with great caution she picked her way, crouching and dodging, from bush to bush; occasionally she took a lightning peep at the silent house, then dipped again and continued her stalking. Following the evergreen hedge around a final corner, she emerged stealthily in the lee of the latticed kitchen porch and drew a breath of relief. "All right so far," she muttered; "I wonder if that old gray cat with the new kittens is fussing around here?" But no breath of life stirred under the porch as she stooped to peer through a break in the lattice, and with a final survey of the premises, inserted her plump person into the gap and wriggled, panting, into the darkness below.