So it happened that they were received from a funeral as they had once been from a wedding, into the portal of an ancient, friendly mansion whose stairway still creaks to the tread of ghosts and broken people, with now and then a happy footstep to remind it of its youth. And there Ellen Neal, mounting stiffly and wearily with the aid of the curving bannister, was hailed by a loud whisper from the floor above. "Hsst! Come on up and look who's here." A radiant Archie led her to his door, and exhibited the One and Only, clad in his bathrobe, curled up asleep upon his bed. "Humph!" gulped Ellen through her tears. "I _knew_ that woman'd manage to fix things somehow!" Which was a final reluctant tribute to the force of kindness that had been Effie May. TWO YEARS LATER A distinguished, foreign-looking gentleman with pointed gray beard got off an interurban car in the vicinity of Louisville, and stood gazing about him uncertainly. It was not the suburban neighborhood he had expected to find, but a distinctly rural one. Here and there smoke was visible above the tree-tops, but the only house within sight was a small farm-cottage of red brick, which had doubtless stood there among its gnarled fruit-trees at a time when the turnpike that passed it was a postroad leading from the metropolis of Middletown (now half a hundred houses strung along the pike) to the little port of Louisville on the Ohio. There was a big chimney at either end, in the picturesque but impractical early fashion, and a bricked-up terrace across the front overflowing with simple flowers: petunias, snapdragon, larkspur. Upon the lawn grazed a rather stiff-kneed thoroughbred, apparently under convoy of a pair of infants. One of these, the smaller, got about on all fours with astonishing rapidity, and seemed imbued with the spirit of investigation. The other, slightly larger, was extremely black as to color and extremely capable as to manner. "Tek keer, you Steffum!" Mr. Nikolai heard this one admonish. "Don't you go so near his mouf, you heah me? Dat hawss could snap you up jes' as easy as nippin' off a dandelium!" The visitor leaned over the fence in sudden interest, "Can you tell me, young person, whether Mrs. Blair lives here?" At sound of his voice the investigatory infant, in an excess of hospitality, rose to its legs and teetered eagerly toward him, only to come to earth at Mr. Nikolai's feet. Nothing daunted, however, it gazed up at him from this lowly position with a mixture of Archie's grin and the droll, blue, wistful twinkle of Joan. "Dar you goes, Steffum!" cried the guardian, in hot pursuit. "Dirtyin' up anodder clean dress so's Miss Ellen gwinter whup me good--He's always a-fallin' over on his face dataway," she complained, while maternally repairing damages with the skirt of what appeared to be an only garment. "I b'lieve he goes and does it a-purpose!" "To gain experience, perhaps?" suggested the visitor.