"I'll be here before the birds are awake," promised Donald.

At the close of Monday's sessions, going down the broad walk from
the high school, Donald overtook Linda and in a breathless
whisper he said: "What do you think? I came near Oka Sayye
again this morning in trig, and his hair was as black as jet,
dyed to a midnight, charcoal finish, and I am not right sure that
he had not borrowed some girl's lipstick and rouge pot for the
benefit of his lips and cheeks. Positively he's hectically
youthful today. What do you know about that?"

Then he hurried on to overtake the crowd of boys he had left,
Linda's heart was racing in her breast.

Turning, she re-entered the school building, and taking a
telephone directory she hunted an address, and then, instead of
going to the car line that took her to Lilac Valley she went to
the address she had looked up. With a pencil she wrote a few
lines on a bit of scratch paper in one of her books. That note
opened a door and admitted her to the presence of a tall, lean,
gray-haired man with quick, blue-gray eyes and lips that seemed
capable of being either grave or gay on short notice. With that
perfect ease which Linda had acquired through the young days of
her life in meeting friends of her father, she went to the table
beside which this man was standing and stretched out her hand.

"Judge Whiting?" she asked.

"Yes," said the Judge.