“I am—­that is I was smashed up in Panama until David came down and brought me home.  It was awfully good of you to—­to know that I—­that I—­” Andrew Sevier paused as mirth, wonder and gratitude spread in confusion over his suntanned face.

“How did it happen?  Was it very dreadful?” And again those distractingly solicitous eyes, full of sympathetic anxiety, were raised to his.  Andrew shook himself mentally to see if it could possibly be a dream he was having, and a little thrill shot through him at the reality of it all.

“Nothing interesting; end of a bridge collapsed and put a rib or two out of commission,” he managed to answer.

“I knew it was something dreadful,” said Caroline Darrah Brown as she moved a step nearer him.  “I was really unhappy about it and I wondered if all the other people who read your poems and watch for them and—­and love them like I do, were worried, too.  But I concluded that they would know how to find out about you; only I didn’t.  I’m glad you are here safe and that I know it.”

The puzzled expression in Andrew Sevier’s face deepened.  Of course he had become more or less accustomed to the interest which his work had caused to be attached to his personality, and this was not the first time he had had a stranger read the poet into the man on first sight.  They had even gone so far as to expect him to talk in blank verse he felt sure, especially when his admirer had been a member of the opposite and fair sex, but a thing like this had never happened to him before.  It was, at the least, disturbing to have a lovely woman rise out of the major’s very hearthstone and claim him as a familiar spirit with the exquisite frankness of a child.  It smacked of the wine of wizardry.  He glanced at her a moment and was on the point of making a tentative inquiry when the major came into the room.

“Well, Andy boy, you’re in from the fields, I see.  How’s the farm?  Every thing shipshape?” As he spoke the major shot a keen glance from under his beetling old brows at the pair and wisely let the situation develop itself.

Andrew answered his salutation promptly, then turned an amused glance on the girl at his side.

“He isn’t going to introduce us,” she laughed with a friendly little look up into his face.  “I ought to have done it myself when you did, but I was so astonished—­and relieved to find you.  I’m Caroline Darrah Brown.”

The words were low and laughing and warm with a sweet friendliness, but they crashed through the room like the breath of a swarm of furies.  Andrew Sevier’s face went white and drawn on the instant, and every muscle in his body stiffened to a tense rigidity.  His dark eyes narrowed themselves to slits and glowed like the coals.

The major’s very blood stopped in his veins and his fine old face looked drawn and gray as he stretched out his hand and laid it on Caroline’s young shoulder.  Not a word came to his lips as he looked in Andrew’s face and waited.