The Colonel coughed slightly.  “And you have the lozenge?”

“I ate it,” said the girl, simply.

“Ah,” said the Colonel.  After a pause he added, delicately:  “But were these attentions—­er—­confined to—­er—–­sacred precincts?  Did he meet you elsewhere?”

“Useter pass our house on the road,” returned the girl, dropping into her monotonous recital, “and useter signal.”

“Ah, signal?” repeated the Colonel, approvingly.

“Yes!  He’d say ‘Kerrow,’ and I’d say ‘Kerree.’  Suthing like a bird, you know.”

Indeed, as she lifted her voice in imitation of the call the Colonel thought it certainly very sweet and birdlike.  At least as she gave it.  With his remembrance of the grim deacon he had doubts as to the melodiousness of his utterance.  He gravely made her repeat it.

“And after that signal?” he added, suggestively.

“He’d pass on,” said the girl.

The Colonel coughed slightly, and tapped his desk with his pen-holder.

“Were there any endearments—­er—­caresses—­er—­such as taking your hand—­er—­clasping your waist?” he suggested, with a gallant yet respectful sweep of his white hand and bowing of his head;—­“er—­ slight pressure of your fingers in the changes of a dance—­I mean,” he corrected himself, with an apologetic cough—­“in the passing of the plate?”

“No;—­he was not what you’d call ‘fond,’” returned the girl.

“Ah!  Adoniram K. Hotchkiss was not ‘fond’ in the ordinary acceptance of the word,” said the Colonel, with professional gravity.

She lifted her disturbing eyes, and again absorbed his in her own.  She also said “Yes,” although her eyes in their mysterious prescience of all he was thinking disclaimed the necessity of any answer at all.  He smiled vacantly.  There was a long pause.  On which she slowly disengaged her parasol from the carpet pattern and stood up.

“I reckon that’s about all,” she said.

“Er—­yes—­but one moment,” said the Colonel, vaguely.  He would have liked to keep her longer, but with her strange premonition of him he felt powerless to detain her, or explain his reason for doing so.  He instinctively knew she had told him all; his professional judgment told him that a more hopeless case had never come to his knowledge.  Yet he was not daunted, only embarrassed.  “No matter,” he said, vaguely.  “Of course I shall have to consult with you again.”  Her eyes again answered that she expected he would, but she added, simply, “When?”

“In the course of a day or two,” said the Colonel, quickly.  “I will send you word.”  She turned to go.  In his eagerness to open the door for her he upset his chair, and with some confusion, that was actually youthful, he almost impeded her movements in the hall, and knocked his broad-brimmed Panama hat from his bowing hand in a final gallant sweep.  Yet as her small, trim, youthful figure, with its simple Leghorn straw hat confined by a blue bow under her round chin, passed away before him, she looked more like a child than ever.