“Well, good-by.  But if ever you do smell smoke in the night, you’ll draw your bolt the first thing, won’t you?”

This evening,—­upon which we have offered you your pass, reader,—­Miss Craydocke is sitting with her mosquito bar up, and her candle alight, finishing some pretty thing that daylight has not been long enough for.  A flag basket at her feet holds strips and rolls of delicate birch-bark, carefully split into filmy thinness, and heaps of star-mosses, cup-mosses, and those thick and crisp with clustering brown spires, as well as sheets of lichen silvery and pale green; and on the lap-board across her knees lies her work,—­a graceful cross in perspective, put on card-board in birch shaded from faint buff to bistre, dashed with the detached lines that seem to have quilted the tree-teguments together.  Around the foot of the cross rises a mound of lovely moss-work in relief, with feathery filaments creeping up and wreathing about the shaft and thwart-beam.  Miss Craydocke is just dotting in some bits of slender coral-headed stems among little brown mushrooms and chalices, as there comes a sudden, imperative knocking at the door of communication, or defense, between her and Sin Saxon.

“You must just open this time, if you please!  I’ve got my arms full, and I couldn’t come round.”

Miss Craydocke slipped her lap-board—­work and all—­under her bureau, upon the floor, for safety; and then with her quaint, queer expression, in which curiosity, pluckiness, and a foretaste of amusement mingled so as to drive out annoyance, pushed back her bolt, and presented herself to the demand of her visitor, much as an undaunted man might fling open his door at the call of a mob.

Sin Saxon stood there, in the light of the good lady’s candle, making a pretty picture against the dim background of the unlighted room beyond.  Her fair hair was tossed, and her cheeks flushed; her blue eyes bright with sauciness and fun.  In her hands, or across her arms, rather, she held some huge, uncouth thing, that was not to the last degree dainty-smelling, either; something conglomerated rudely upon a great crooked log or branch, which, glanced at closer, proved to be a fragment of gray old pine.  Sticks and roots and bark, straw and grass and locks of dirty sheep’s-wool, made up its bulk and its untidiness; and this thing Sin held out with glee, declaring she had brought a real treasure to add to Miss Craydocke’s collection.

“Such a chance!” she said, coming in.  “One mightn’t have another in a dozen years.  I have just given Jimmy Wigley a quarter for it, and he’d just all but broken his neck to get it.  It’s a real crow’s nest.  Corvinus something-else-us, I suppose.  Where will you have it?  I’m going to nail it up for you myself.  Won’t it make a nice contrast to the humming-bird’s?  Over the bed, shall I?  But then, if it should drop down on your nose, you know!  I think the corner over the fireplace will be best.  Yes, we’ll have it right up perpendicular, in the angle.  The branch twists a little, you see, and the nest will run out with its odds and ends like an old banner.  Might I push up the washstand to get on to?”