his own home all the more startling. It was a
scream--loud, frantic, and terror-stricken.

Eugene stopped, with the gate half open.

Out of the winter skeleton of a grape-arbor at
one side of the four-square brick house a brown-
faced girl of seventeen precipitated herself through
the air in the midst of a shower of torn card-board
which she threw before her as she leaped. She lit
upon her toes and headed for the gate at top speed,
pursued by a pale young man whose thin arms
strove spasmodically to reach her. Scattering
snow behind them, hair flying, the pair sped on
like two tattered branches before a high wind; for,
as they came nearer Eugene (of whom, in the
tensity of their flight, they took no note), it was
to be seen that both were so shabbily dressed as
to be almost ragged. There was a brown patch
upon the girl's faded skirt at the knee; the shortness
of the garment indicating its age to be something
over three years, as well as permitting the
knowledge to become more general than befitting
that her cotton stockings had been clumsily darned
in several places. Her pursuer was in as evil case;
his trousers displayed a tendency to fringedness at
pocket and heel; his coat, blowing open as he ran,
threw pennants of torn lining to the breeze, and
made it too plain that there were but three buttons
on his waistcoat.