engage in the hazardous American adventure. Two months after he inherited his little fortune he landed in New York with his Paris career a closed incident; a few days later he was installed in the old farmhouse on the edge of his wilderness estate and within a mile of the post office and railway station at Deer Spring. On a hill near the Lake Wauchong end of his estate—a hill that seemed a knoll in comparison with the steeps encompassing it on all sides—he got the village carpenter hastily to build for him a house of one large and lofty room, admitting light freely by way of big windows in the walls and an enormous skylight in the roof. Such small impression as his return made was wholly confined to his native Deer Spring. There the gossip went that, having failed to make art pay, he had come back home to “laze round” and live off his aunt’s money. As he had the doing sort of man’s aversion to discussing his plans, such of the villagers as succeeded in drawing him into lengthier parley than polite exchange of greetings heard nothing that contradicted the gossip.

[5]

[6]Toward the end of an April afternoon, not long after the studio was finished, Roger reached it in the midst of a tremendous storm of rain and wind. Just before he gained the shelter of the north wall a swooping gust blew into his face a heavy cloud of wood smoke; so when he strode in he was not altogether unprepared for the sight that met his eyes as he dashed the water and smoke out of them. A fire had been built with generous hands in the fireplace in the south wall. Upon the long, low bench parallel with the outer edge of the broad hearth lay the intruder who had doubtless sought the one refuge within a radius of a mile when the storm came on suddenly about half an hour before. Roger had assumed he would find a man; but he was not much surprised to see that it was a woman for whom his roof was doing this good turn.

[6]

As he divested himself of dripping hat and water-proof he said genially: “I’m glad you made yourself at home!”

No answer came and the figure did not move. He flung his wraps on one of the heavy plain chairs which, with the bench, were all the furniture he had—or wanted. He advanced to a corner of the hearth to take a look at his guest. She was a girl—a young girl, sound asleep. Her head was comfortably pillowed on one slim, round arm and her folded jacket. Her sweet,[7] healthily delicate face was toward the fire, and flushed from its warmth. She had abundant yellow hair, long lashes somewhat darker, a charming, determined mouth, a very fair 

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