A broad beam of light fell across the dark, wainscoted room, and in the track of it sat a handsome well-dressed man, busily eating. In front of him was a roast chicken, a cut-glass dish of celery and a ruby mound of jelly; a crusty loaf of new bread lay broken at his right; at his left, winking in the sunbeam, stood a decanter half filled with a topaz liquor. He was daintily poising a bit of jelly on some bread, the mouthful was in the air, when his eyes fell on Caroline, an amazed and cobwebbed statue in front of him. The hand that held the bread grew rigid. As spilled milk spreads over a table, the man's face was flooded with sudden grayish white; against it his thin lips were marked in lavender. While the grandfather clock ticked ten times they stared at each other, and then a wave of deep red poured over his face and his mouth twitched. "What are you doing here, little girl?" he demanded sternly, pointedly regarding her dusty rumpled figure. Caroline gulped and dropped her eyes. "I--I--nothing particular," she murmured guiltily. The man laid the piece of bread down carefully and wiped his fingers on the napkin spread across his knees. "Some time," he said, in a leisurely drawl, "you'll burst into a room like that, where a person with a weak heart may be sitting, and that'll be the last of 'em." [Illustration: "What are you doing here, little girl?" he demanded sternly.] "The last of 'em?" Caroline repeated vaguely. "Just so. They'll die on you," he explained briefly. Caroline stepped nearer. "Is--is your heart weak?" she inquired fearfully. "I'm so sorry. So is my Uncle Lindsay's." "What were you sneaking about so soft for?" he demanded. She flushed. "I--I was playing burglars," she confessed, "and I got to where they were in here with the silver, and--and I was coming in to--to get them, and I didn't expect anybody would be here, really, you know, and I was surprised when I saw you. I didn't know about your heart." "Burglars?" said the man, laughing loudly. "Well, that's one on me! I must say you're a nervy young party. So you thought I was a burglar, did you?" "Oh, no!" Caroline cried, "of course not--I meant I was playing it was burglars; I didn't mean you. I--I didn't know anybody was here." "Humph!" said he. "What made you play burglars? Anything in that line yourself, ever?" Caroline stared uncomprehendingly. "My mother doesn't think it's right for Aunt Edith to go off and leave the house all alone the way she does," she explained; "she's always telling her some one will break in if she doesn't leave Selma or a dog. And she never locks a thing, you know--she says if they intend to get in, they will, and that's all there is about it. So this time she went for three days, and Miss Honey and the General and Delia; and Selma and Anna went to a wedding and Ed went somewhere about a lawn-mower, and little Ed was going to get the pony shod. I told Aunt Edith I'd--" she coughed importantly--"keep an eye on the house."