We did not exchange a word, and after knocking

about in the library for several hours I went out for a

tramp. Winter had indeed come and possessed the

earth, and it had given me a new landscape. The snow

continued to fall in great, heavy flakes, and the ground

was whitening fast.

A rabbit's track caught my eye and I followed it,

hardly conscious that I did so. Then the clear print of

two small shoes mingled with the rabbit's trail. A few

moments later I picked up an overshoe, evidently lost

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in the chase by one of Sister Theresa's girls, I reflected.

I remembered that while at Tech I had collected diverse

memorabilia from school-girl acquaintances, and here I

was beginning a new series with a string of beads and an

overshoe!

A rabbit is always an attractive quarry. Few things

besides riches are so elusive, and the little fellows have,

I am sure, a shrewd humor peculiar to themselves. I

rather envied the school-girl who had ventured forth for

a run in the first snow-storm of the season. I recalled

Aldrich's turn on Gautier's lines as I followed the

double trail: "Howe'er you tread, a tiny mould

Betrays that light foot all the same;

Upon this glistening, snowy fold

At every step it signs your name."

A pretty autograph, indeed! The snow fell steadily

and I tramped on over the joint signature of the girl

and the rabbit. Near the lake they parted company, the

rabbit leading off at a tangent, on a line parallel with

the lake, while his pursuer's steps pointed toward the

boat-house.

There was, so far as I knew, only one student of adventurous

blood at St. Agatha's, and I was not in the

least surprised to see, on the little sheltered balcony of

the boat-house, the red tam-o'-shanter. She wore, too,

the covert coat I remembered from the day I saw her

first from the wall. Her back was toward me as I drew

near; her hands were thrust into her pockets. She was

evidently enjoying the soft mingling of the snow with

the still, blue waters of the lake, and a girl and a snow-storm

are, if you ask my opinion, a pretty combination.

The fact of a girl's facing a winter storm argues

mightily in her favor,-testifies, if you will allow me,

to a serene and dauntless spirit, for one thing, and a

sound constitution, for another.

I ran up the steps, my cap in one hand, her overshoe

in the other. She drew back a trifle, just enough to

bring my conscience to its knees.

"I didn't mean to listen that day. I just happened

to be on the wall and it was a thoroughly underbred

trick-my twitting you about it-and I should have told

you before if I'd known how to see you-"

"May I trouble you for that shoe?" she said with a

great deal of dignity.




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