"Would you mind going there where it's quiet--I've
such a lot o' things I want to ask you--you won't mind
the walk, will you?"

"Certainly not--we'll go there," Mary responded in
even, business-like tones.

"Because, if you don't want to walk I'll call a
cab, if you'll let me----"

"Not at all," was the quick answer. "I love to
walk."

It was impossible for the girl to repress a smile
at her ridiculous situation! If any human being had
told her yesterday that she, Mary Adams, an old-
fashioned girl with old-fashioned ideas of the
proprieties of life, would have allowed herself to be
picked up by an utter stranger in this unceremonious
way, she would have resented the assertion as a
personal insult--yet the preposterous and impossible
thing had happened and she was growing each moment more
and more deeply interested in the study of the
remarkable youth by her side.

He was not handsome in the conventional sense. His
features were too strong for that. An enemy might have
called them coarse. Their first impression was of
enormous strength and exhaustless vitality. He walked
with a quick, military precision and planted his small