“I was scared,” she admitted, reluctantly, after a brief silence, smiling a little at her own foolishness. “It’s so dark and gloomy in here, and you were gone so long——”

Her voice trailed off into an indistinct murmur, but she still shuddered in spite of herself.

“Funny old place,” commented Harlan, 5 kneeling on the hearth and laying kindlings, log-cabin fashion, in the fireplace. “If an architect planned it, he must have gone crazy the week before he did it.”

5

“Or at the time. Don’t, dear—wait a minute. Let’s light our first fire together.”

He smiled as she slipped to her knees beside him, and his hand held hers while the blazing splinter set the pine kindling aflame. Quickly the whole room was aglow with light and warmth, in cheerful contrast to the stormy tumult outside.

“Somebody said once,” observed Harlan, as they drew their chairs close to the hearth, “that four feet on a fender are sufficient for happiness.”

“Depends altogether on the feet,” rejoined Dorothy, quickly. “I wouldn’t want Uncle Ebeneezer sitting here beside me—no disrespect intended to your relation, as such.”

“Poor old duck,” said Harlan, kindly. “Life was never very good to him, and Death took away the only thing he ever loved.

“Aunt Rebecca,” he continued, feeling her unspoken question. “She died suddenly, when they had been married only three or four weeks.” 6

6

“Like us,” whispered Dorothy, for the first time conscious of a tenderness toward the departed Mr. Judson, of Judson Centre.

“It was four weeks ago to-day, wasn’t it?” he mused, instinctively seeking her hand.

“I thought you’d forgotten,” she smiled back at him. “I feel like an old married woman, already.”

“You don’t look it,” he returned, gently. Few would have called her beautiful, but love brings beauty with it, and Harlan saw an exquisite loveliness in the deep, dark eyes, the brown hair that rippled and shone in the firelight, the smooth, creamy skin, and the sensitive mouth that betrayed every passing mood.

“None the less, I am,” she went on. “I’ve grown so used to 

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