unconcealed sulky disfavor.

"Doctor Goodlowe has hardly started dinner," she asserted.

"Just ask him to come out for a little," the man repeated.

He was past middle age, awkward in harsh ill-fitting and formal clothes
and with a gaunt high-boned countenance and clear blue eyes.

His companion, a wistfully pale girl under an absurd and expensive hat,
laid her hand in an embroidered white silk glove on his arm and said in
a low tone: "We won't bother him, Calvin. There are plenty of ministers
in Washington; or we could come back later."

"There are, and we could," he agreed; "but we won't. I'm not going to
wait a minute more for you, Lucy. Not now that you are willing. Why, I
have been waiting half my life already."

I

A gaunt young man with clear blue eyes sat on the bank of a mountain
road and gazed at the newly-built house opposite. It was the only
dwelling visible. Behind, the range rose in a dark wall against the
evening sky; on either hand the small green valley was lost in a blue
haze of serried peaks. The house was not imposing; in reality small,
but a story and a half, it had a length of three rooms with a kitchen
forming an angle, invisible from where Calvin Stammark sat; an outside
chimney at each end, and a narrow covered portico over the front door.

An expiring clatter of hoofs marked the departure of the neighbor who