pushed me aside.

At last with a groan of protest, it moved—an inch, two. I reached through and unfastened the blinds and the sweet warm air rushed in. My, how good it smelled!

The window opened onto the gently sloping tin roof of a narrow side porch. After we had succeeded in raising it far enough, we climbed through. It was not at all clear to either of us what we were going to do next. But anything, we felt, was better than staying cooped up in that house any longer.

Making our way cautiously to the edge of the roof, we saw that it was, as I had anticipated, a goodish drop to the ground. Moreover, there were no adjacent tree branches or any of those convenient trellises that are always so handy in the story books.

We sat down with our feet braced against the gutter to consider the situation. “Marooned on a tin roof!” giggled Eve. The spirits of both of us had risen enormously with our escape from the house. Some one was bound to pass along the road sooner or later, we decided. And though the house stood a considerable distance back from it, still our lung power was good.

The road to Old Beecham, however, was off the main artery of travel and so far as we could see from our perch, there was simply no sign of life anywhere. “I can’t think,” I said, “why anyone should want to build a house way off here, unless he was a hermit or something. I tell you, Eve,” I added with conviction, “those Cravens were a queer lot!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Eve returned musingly. “It’s awfully peaceful and sort of—well, self sufficient. And I shouldn’t wonder if, when the leaves are off the trees, you could get a glimpse of the sea off there somewhere.”

“Um—maybe.” I was wondering what Aunt Cal was thinking by now. Any remaining shred of character which I might have still possessed in her eyes, must quite have vanished by this time. And if we did not get home that night—well with a woman like Aunt Cal, I just couldn’t imagine what would happen. It was within the realm of possibility that she might send us both packing after such an escapade!

V John Doe, Esquire

The minutes ticked into an hour and still no one passed. The sun was already behind the house and a little breeze was rustling the tall grass and bushes below us. I shall never smell syringas again without thinking of those hours on that tin roof. For it was nearly two full hours before we 

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