“Ah ha!—­wasting the midnight oil instead of imbibing the morning dews,” said Father Wynn archly, illustrating his metaphor with a movement of his hand to his lips.  “What have we here?”

“An anonymous gift,” replied Low simply, recognizing the father of Nellie by rising from his chair.  “It’s a volume I’ve longed to possess, but never could afford to buy.  I cannot imagine who sent it to me.”

Wynn was for a moment startled by the thought that this recipient of valuable gifts might have influential friends.  But a glance at the bare room, which looked like a camp, and the strange, unconventional garb of its occupant, restored his former convictions.  There might be a promise of intelligence, but scarcely of prosperity, in the figure before him.

“Ah!  We must not forget that we are watched over in the night season,” he said, laying his hand on Low’s shoulder, with an illustration of celestial guardianship that would have been impious but for its palpable grotesqueness.  “No, sir, we know not what a day may bring forth.”

Unfortunately, Low’s practical mind did not go beyond a mere human interpretation.  It was enough, however, to put a new light in his eye and a faint color in his cheek.

“Could it have been Miss Nellie?” he asked, with half-boyish hesitation.

Mr. Wynn was too much of a Christian not to bow before what appeared to him the purely providential interposition of this suggestion.  Seizing it and Low at the same moment, he playfully forced him down again in his chair.

“Ah, you rascal!” he said, with infinite archness; “that’s your game, is it?  You want to trap poor Father Wynn.  You want to make him say ‘No.’  You want to tempt him to commit himself.  No, sir!—­never, sir!—­no, no!”

Firmly convinced that the present was Nellie’s and that her father only good-humoredly guessed it, the young man’s simple, truthful nature was embarrassed.  He longed to express his gratitude, but feared to betray the young girl’s trust.  The Reverend Mr. Wynn speedily relieved his mind.

“No,” he continued, bestriding a chair, and familiarly confronting Low over its back.  “No, sir—­no!  And you want me to say ‘No,’ don’t you, regarding the little walks of Nellie and a certain young man in the Carquinez Woods?—­ha, ha!  You’d like me to say that I knew nothing of the botanizings, and the herb collectings, and the picnickings there—­he-he!—­you sly dog!  Perhaps you’d like to tempt Father Wynn further and make him swear he knows nothing of his daughter disguising herself in a duster and meeting another young man—­isn’t it another young man?—­all alone, eh?  Perhaps you want poor old Father Wynn to say ‘No.’  No, sir, nothing of the kind ever occurred.  Ah, you young rascal!”

Slightly troubled, in spite of Wynn’s hearty manner, Low, with his usual directness however, said, “I do not want any one to deny that I have seen Miss Nellie.”