possible," said Joe.

"Does he play?" asked Christie.

"You bet," said Joe, quite forgetting himself in his enthusiasm. "He can
snatch Mozart and Beethoven bald-headed."

In the embarrassing silence that followed this speech the fringe of pine
wood nearest the flat was reached. Here there was a rude "clearing," and
beneath an enormous pine stood the two recently joined tenements. There
was no attempt to conceal the point of junction between Kearney's
cabin and the newly-transported saloon from the flat--no architectural
illusion of the palpable collusion of the two buildings, which seemed
to be telescoped into each other. The front room or living room occupied
the whole of Kearney's cabin. It contained, in addition to the necessary
articles for housekeeping, a "bunk" or berth for Mr. Carr, so as to
leave the second building entirely to the occupation of his daughters as
bedroom and boudoir.

There was a half-humorous, half-apologetic exhibition of the rude
utensils of the living room, and then the young men turned away as the
two girls entered the open door of the second room. Neither Christie nor
Jessie could for a moment understand the delicacy which kept these young
men from accompanying them into the room they had but a few moments
before decorated and arranged with their own hands, and it was not until
they turned to thank their strange entertainers that they found that
they were gone.

The arrangement of the second room was rude and bizarre, but not without
a singular originality and even tastefulness of conception. What had