I smiled to find myself adjusting my scarf and

straightening my collar as I beheld my neighbors for

the first time.

As I sat thus on the wall I heard the sound of angry

voices back of me on the Glenarm side, and a crash of

underbrush marked a flight and pursuit. I crouched

down on the wall and waited. In a moment a man

plunged through the wood and stumbled over a low-hanging

vine and fell, not ten yards from where I lay.

To my great surprise it was Morgan, my acquaintance

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of the morning. He rose, cursed his ill luck and, hugging

the wall close, ran toward the lake. Instantly the

pursuer broke into view. It was Bates, evidently much

excited and with an ugly cut across his forehead. He

carried a heavy club, and, after listening for a moment

for sounds of the enemy, he hurried after the caretaker.

It was not my row, though I must say it quickened

my curiosity. I straightened myself out, threw my legs

over the school side of the wall and lighted a cigar,

feeling cheered by the opportunity the stone barricade

offered for observing the world.

As I looked off toward the little church I found two

other actors appearing on the scene. A girl stood in a

little opening of the wood, talking to a man. Her hands

were thrust into the pockets of her covert coat; she wore

a red tam-o'-shanter, that made a bright bit of color in

the wood. They were not more than twenty feet away,

but a wild growth of young maples lay between us,

screening the wall. Their profiles were toward me, and

the tones of the girl's voice reached me clearly, as she

addressed her companion. He wore a clergyman's high

waistcoat, and I assumed that he was the chaplain whom

Bates had mentioned. I am not by nature an eavesdropper,

but the girl was clearly making a plea of some

kind, and the chaplain's stalwart figure awoke in me an

antagonism that held me to the wall.

"If he comes here I shall go away, so you may as well

understand it and tell him. I shan't see him under any

circumstances, and I'm not going to Florida or California

or anywhere else in a private car, no matter who

chaperones it."

"Certainly not, unless you want to-certainly not,"

said the chaplain. "You understand that I'm only giving

you his message. He thought it best-"

"Not to write to me or to Sister Theresa!" interrupted

the girl contemptuously. "What a clever man

he is!"

"And how unclever I am!" said the clergyman, laughing.

"Well, I thank you for giving me the opportunity

to present his message."

She smiled, nodded and turned swiftly toward the

school. The chaplain looked after her for a few moments,

then walked away soberly toward the lake. He

was a young fellow, clean-shaven and dark, and with a

pair of shoulders that gave me a twinge of envy. I could

not guess how great a factor that vigorous figure was to

be in my own affairs. As I swung down from the wall

and walked toward Glenarm House, my thoughts were

not with the athletic chaplain, but with the girl, whose

youth was, I reflected, marked by her short skirt, the unconcern

with which her hands were thrust into the

pockets of her coat, and the irresponsible tilt of the tam-o'-shanter.

There is something jaunty, a suggestion of

spirit and independence in a tam-o'-shanter, particularly

a red one. If the red tam-o'-shanter expressed, so to

speak, the key-note of St. Agatha's, the proximity of the

school was not so bad a thing after all.




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