No one except old Bob was to be seen in the room, but we watched him and
listened breathlessly. When he finished "Liza," he laid the fiddle
across his knee, wiped his face with a new and brilliant blue silk
handkerchief, and said:
"Now come de big speech."
The Honorable David Beasley, carrying a small mahogany table, stepped
out from beyond the Christmas-tree, advanced to the centre of the room;
set the table down; disappeared for a moment and returned with a white
water-pitcher and a glass. He placed these upon the table, bowed
gracefully several times, then spoke:
"Ladies and gentlemen--" There he paused.
"Well," said Mr. Simeon Peck, slowly, "don't this beat hell!"
"Look out!" The "Journal" reporter twitched his sleeve. "Ladies
present."
"Where?" said I.
He leaned nearer me and spoke in a low tone. "Just behind us. She
followed us over from your boarding-house. She's been standing around
near us all along. I supposed she was Dowden's daughter, probably."
"He hasn't any daughter," I said, and stepped back to the hooded figure
I had been too absorbed in our quest to notice.
It was Miss Apperthwaite.
She had thrown a loose cloak over her head and shoulders; but enveloped
in it as she was, and crested and epauletted with white, I knew her at
once. There was no mistaking her, even in a blizzard.
She caught my hand with a strong, quick pressure, and, bending her head
to mine, said, close to my ear:
"I heard everything that man said in our hallway.
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