"Supper am sarved, little Mis'," Rufus announced from the hack door, as I stood still looking and listening into the night.

"Uncle Cradd," I asked eagerly at the end of the food prayer that the old gentleman had offered after seating me with ceremony behind a steaming silver coffee urn of colonial pattern, of which I had heard all my life, "who is that remarkable man?"

CHAPTER III

"Si Beesley? Spare rib, dear?" was his disappointing but hospitable, answer in two return questions to my anxious inquiries about the Pan who had come out of the woods at my need.

"No; I mean—mean, didn't you call him Adam?"

"Nobody knows. Now, William, a spare rib and a muffin is real nourishment after the nightingale's tongues and snails you've been living on for twenty-odd years, isn't it?" As he spoke Uncle Cradd beamed on father, who was eating with the first show of real pleasure in food since we had had to send Henri back to New York, after the crash, weeping with all his French-cook soul at leaving us after fifteen years' service.

"I have always enjoyed that essay of Charles Lamb's on roast pig, Cradd," answered father as he took a second muffin. "I know that Lamb used to bore you, Cradd, but honestly now, doesn't his materialism seem—"

"Oh, Uncle Cradd, please tell me about that Adam man before you and father disappear into the eighteenth century," I pleaded, as I handed two cups of steaming coffee to Rufus to pass my two elderly savants.

"There is nothing to tell, Nancy child," answered Uncle Cradd, with an indulgent smile as he peered at me over his glasses. "Upon my word, William, Nancy is the living image of mother when we first remember her, isn't she? You are very beautiful, my dear."

"I know it," I answered hurriedly and hardly aware of what I was saying; "but I want to k