drew in the shutters while I watched, and the lights went out. It was an early household. Perhaps Teresa could not slip away till after her aunt had gone up stairs. I sat down on the piazza steps and waited.

At first I was alert and expectant, then impatient, then resigned, and to a certain degree relieved. But a distinct feeling of annoyance mingled with the relief. After all, she might have come as far as this, if only to tell me she would not come any farther. And I was a little anxious, too, for never before had night descended upon a quarrel unmade-up between us.

At eleven I got up and retraced my steps to the arch of ramblers, from where, stopping to glance back at the house, I saw a light in Teresa's window. She was there, then, perhaps looking out into the garden. I thought she might at least have made me some sign, and I dug my heel into the gravel with a vicious crunch, turned away, and then I perceived a note pinned with a large pin to a swaying branch of the rambler. I wondered how it had escaped me before. It had no address, but I did not hesitate to open it, and, having done so, read these words in Teresa's handwriting:

I would n't go with you to save my life. This episode is finished.

To say I was angry is a poor way of expressing the white heat of fury that suddenly surged through me. She would n't go with me, indeed? After making the whole fabric of our future happiness totter because of my refusal to ask her! And this episode was finished, was it? Episode, by the Lord! And finished for a whim! Not much it was n't finished, I declared, raging, and I dashed back through the rose-garden and up the terrace steps like a maniac.

I did n't know my brain had registered the fact that a ladder was lying on the grass under one of the hedges, but I went to it as straight as an arrow. It was a short ladder, probably used by the gardener when he clipped the ornamental trees near the house, and it did not by any means reach the piazza-roof when I got it up against one of the pillars. But no amount of scrambling was going to stop me now. Unless I broke my neck in the attempt, I meant to say a thing or

two to Teresa that night, and I was almost prepared to snatch her out of the window in her dressing-gown, and drive her to Jericho, if she did n't listen to rea

son.

I was balanced on the top rung, trying to get a good grip on the gutter coping before I swung myself up, when I heard my name called softly from below. There was Teresa, wrapped in a cloak, standing where the shadow of the house was deepest, and looking up at me with every appearance of affection and alarm.

"Martin, I'm here. Please, what are you doing?"

I slipped hastily down and resumed my coat, which I had thrown off when I began my climb. Then I caught Teresa by the shoulders and glared at her.

"I was going after you," I said. "What the devil did you mean by that note?"

"Just what I said, dear," returned Teresa, meeting my glare with an upward sweep of eyelashes that disclosed a steady, self-reliant look.

"You have the face to stand there and tell me you would n't go with me after this afternoon?"

"And this evening," supplemented Teresa, enigmatically. "Yes, Martin."

"Not to save your life, I think you said," I went on, quite savage and sarcastic.

"Not now," replied Teresa, gently.

"I'm not so sure about that," said I, and I whirled her about and marched her across the grass and down through the garden ahead of me. When we were well hidden from the house I stopped. "Now, then," I demanded, facing her, "will you explain to me what you mean by all this?"

"We're not going to run away together, that 's all."

"I don't see anything to prevent it," said I.

"Don't you?" said Teresa, and I thought a dimple at the corner of her mouth deepened.

"You loved me well enough this afternoon to go, and this evening you don't. Is that it?"

"That's all I wanted. That's all mostly any woman wants,' interrupted Teresa. "Don't you see, you stupid man? I was n't quite in earnest when we began this afternoon, though indeed things are sometimes so uncomfortable for me that it's all I can do to stand it, and this was a dear way out. But I saw all your bold qualities hurrying helter-skelter to cover when you thought I might really be going to call upon them, and I could n't bear it. I had to keep on calling just to see if they would n't come.'

"Well," said I, stiffly.

"Well, they came," cried Teresa, triumphantly. "I never was so gloriously happy in my life as when I saw you make for that ladder."

"Where were you?" I asked suspiciously.

"Oh, we can, can we?" said I. "For how long, I should like to know?"

"Till I'm twenty-one. I told my aunt this evening that I 'd marry you the day I came of age, and that nothing any one could say would stop my being engaged to you."

"I won't wait so long," said I.

"Who's got the say about this?" inquired Teresa, slangily.

"If there was a man anywhere about, he would have," returned I, grimly.

"Martin, there is n't such another man as you in all the world," cried Teresa. "You 're splendid, and I adore you. But do let me go back now. You know you 'd be sorry if we did this."

I thought for a moment of picking Teresa up and walking off down the avenue with her, but somehow I knew I would n't.

"All right, darling," I said, "have it your own way. I'll go back with you and see you safely in."

And so we went back.

"All the time?"

"All the time."

Here, seeing from the expression of my face that I was on the verge of an explosion, Teresa flung herself into my arms.

"But I was loving you most dreadfully every minute, Martin," she declared, "and admiring you more than I can say."

"If it makes a woman admire a man to see him behave like a lunatic," said I, "you were quite justified." "So I was. It's only a sufficiency of good red blood that makes him capable of behaving like that sort of lunatic."

"Well, then, come along," said I, "the motor 's waiting."

“Oh, no, dear," pleaded Teresa, making herself as resistant as a kitten with all its claws planted. "What you said today is perfectly true. It would n't be right. And it is n't necessary. We can wait."

As we settled ourselves in the motor, which had been hidden round a corner, that we might escape a shower of rice and white satin slippers, I said to Teresa:

"Well, here we are at last, all safely and properly married. Are you glad?" She looked at me very softly and sweetly and nodded.

"But, oh, Martin," she said, "I 'm always thinking-that night-you know, when we did n't run away, if we only had, it would have meant-something that we sha'n't ever have again.”

"Nonsense!" said I. "No, it would n't. How could it?"

"This is good," said Teresa, "but that was-romance." And I heard her murmur something that sounded like:

never could recapture That first fine careless rapture."

Which was manifestly absurd.

I-I was terribly embar

rassed in a very public place, in scanty underclothing. I fell off a high building, and landed unhurt in a cushion of compressed air made by two mad elephants rushing together.

I moved my head, and found the pillow cold; it had not been so in a long time. I drew my head back, and opened an eye. I glimpsed nothing familiar; there were many covers, but none of them old friends. I rolled my eye to the ceiling, a whitewashed ceiling, old and full of bumps. Both eyes came wide open and straining; there was a cold, gray reflection there. Memories came a-tumbling: it was Saturday morning in the country, and there was snow on the ground. Old-fashioned sleigh-bells, like some forgotten song of the nursery of long ago, jangled outside, toned by the snow blanket that took the harsh jingle out of them and paraded before me a little boy by a brook, like an echo of dreams.

"The baker's sleigh-bells, for the milkman never trusted his load to an upset on runners," I thought. I could hear the doctor sleeping in the next room; he was making a noise like an asthmatic man puffing audibly on a big cigar. It was he who had coaxed me on this trip, for a farm was to be auctioned off this Saturday afternoon at the Washington House, in the county of —, in the township of that he intended to buy.

We shaved and dressed in the smell of an oil-stove, brilliant and brave in nickel trimmings, but sadly lacking in honest heat.

"Come," said the doctor, "we must hurry and get breakfast and buy some rubber boots, for this snow is sure to be deeper than the oldest inhabitant can ever remember seeing before."

A little bell jingled over the door of the boot-and-shoe emporium as we pushed

for soles and heels and boot-tops greeted us; in the back of the shop an old man was hammering on the heel of a generous shoe. He ceased his hammering, and glanced over the top of his glasses interrogatively without much warmth of greeting. No doubt we suggested drummers to him, and I am sure he was overstocked.

"Sir," said the doctor, "we are two country boys, and we want two pairs of boots with copper toes and very red tops."

The old shoemaker stiffened for a minute and looked hard at us; then his glasses came off, and he stood up.

"Saved up all summer for them, sonny? Sold all the old iron you could find?"

The doctor grinned an acknowledgment of the question, and nodded his head.

Perfectly serious, and beaming in virtuous joy, the old man disappeared, and came back with a box covered with dust, his eyes twinkling over the top of it. It was dusted outside of the door, reverently opened, and therein were red-topped boots with copper toes, tied in pairs with fancy cords. Three pairs of eyes stared into it reminiscently.

As serious as I ever remember seeing him, the doctor selected the smallest pair, straightened, and held them off at arm'slength, looking at them with an expression that ever changed, and dropped the wrinkles of years one by one, until he stood almost a small boy once more. Slowly he said, "I'll take this pair."

The old shoemaker looked at him, and his look suggested the growing up of a lad, the comedies and tragedies of youth, the love-making, the tombstones in the churchyard. He started to say something; the doctor tossed his head, took him by the arm, and pointed to some hip-high rubber boots.

We started out of the store, each wearing a pair. We plowed through the snowbanks across the street; we turned and

looked back instinctively. The old shoemaker was watching us, openly, not furtively, as villagers are wont to do. We bought two brown plush caps with eartabs, two pairs of buckskin mittens, and then somehow we stood at the top of the coasting-hill without sleds, like poor country boys. The boys were running toward it, excitedly calling. The doctor gave a sigh of content; again he led me, and I followed without question. The boots, the cap, and the mittens, with the white snow covering all things, had taken him up and tossed him back into the years of yesterday.

When we came to a patch of untracked snow he insisted on wading around in it, plowing it up in fantastic designs with his footprints-designs that seemed to delight him. And then I began to see what the designs were. They were wonderful

plans of a Robinson Crusoe island he was on. I separated Man Friday's tracks from the cannibals without trouble, and discovered the cave in the center of the largest untracked place. The cave was full of guns and powder-kegs. So I raced him to the next unbroken patch, won the race, and built a railroad across the Andes.

We designed and built wonderful castles in Spain, playgrounds for old-young men, all in the untracked snow, almost up to the office door of a little old twinkling eyed man with shiny trousers and as many titles hanging to his name as a big diplomat. He stopped worrying the little stove with a poker, spat in a box of sand, and greeted the doctor familiarly.

The doctor called him "squire," took out a certified check, and gave it to him with directions; the squire looked hard, and looked again. He objected to certain technicalities, but the doctor waved him away, standing on tiptoes, with his hand on the door-knob. I wanted to look about the office and stamp pieces of paper with the dusty seals on the desk; but no, I was hurried faster and faster, only stopping while the doctor gazed regretfully at a vacant lot covered with snow, as if time was too short to conquer it, and on again, almost on a run, the noise of the boys on the coasting-hill getting nearer and shriller.

Now, if you tuck your overcoat under you with exactly the right movements,

as scientific as feints and lunges in fencing, straddle the bob-sled, perhaps with stiffening joints, but with knowledge, make room for the man in front of you, intelligently leaving space for the tailender behind you, you will be asked to ride again, for your weight will count in the race.

The doctor and I were lost in a wild, untamed joy of snow in the country. The sun came out, and sent clumps of purple woods in the distance across our vision. The boys yelled in delight at all things, and accepted us, two strangers, with all the unbridled joy a coasting-hill gives to those who love it and compare shining

runners.

We were upset and spilled in the ditch, to roll over one another with yells of delight. We raced, we puffed up the hill, we sat down in the snow in sheer exhaustion, and ate mouthfuls of virgin snow wonderfully fresh from its birthplace overhead. The doctor told how he made believe to fall once, in the days of long ago, and then kiss the imprint in the snow where a little girl had walked. The sleds went up and down this little old hill, and the tag ends of the storm-clouds raced southward as the northwest wind increased. Bunches of snowflakes, like delicious French pastry, tumbled off the limbs of the trees all about us, or made holes in the virgin blanket beyond our desecrations. A song came from the bare branches as they threshed in the winda song of frozen rivers and plains, a song of the Northmen, with never a crooning lullaby, a wild song of existence, a "Fight to Live Hymn" of an unlisted army, a song of frying grease, of big wood fires that roared, of pelts that would some day enfold lovingly the daintiest lady in the land. And so we rested and coasted and forgot the city, with its dirty, brown slush, its rows of snow-carts, and its unemployed.

Then the shoe-factory whistle shrilled out twelve o'clock, and a dark and dismal pall enshrouded our young playmates. The doctor and I exchanged knowing glances. It was the time wasted for dinner, and we must be on time. I wondered, for the doctor was still under the spell of the copper-toed boots.

I had caught up to his enthusiasm once or twice, only to be left behind as he did