“Excuse me,” said a man’s voice above her, “but are either of you ladies Mrs. Lura Doring?”

The effect was electrical.  Miss Lucinda sat bolt upright and stared madly about.  Tom Speckert had told her to be sure to answer to that name.  It would get him into trouble if she failed to do so.

“Yes, yes,” she gasped; “I am Mrs. Lura Doring.”

The members of her little party looked at her anxiously and ceased to laugh.  The slide had evidently unsettled her mind.

“Why, this is Miss Perkins—­Miss Lucinda Perkins of Locustwood, Ohio,” explained Dick Benson to the officer, “She’s rather upset by her tobogganing, and didn’t understand you.”

“I did,” declared Miss Lucinda, making mysterious signs to Dick to be silent.  “It’s all right; I am Mrs. Doring.”

The officer looked suspiciously from one to the other, then consulted his memorandum:  “Small, slender woman, yellow hair, gray eyes, answers to name of Mrs. Lura Doring.  Left Chicago on June 10.”

“When did she get to New York?” asked the officer.

“A week ago to-morrow, on the eleventh,” said Floss.

“Then I guess I’ll have to take her up,” said the officer; “she answers all the requirements.  I’ve got a warrant for her arrest.”

“Arrest!” gasped Benson.  “What for?”

“For forging her husband’s name, and defrauding two hotels in Chicago.”

“My husband—­” Miss Lucinda staggered to her feet, then, catching sight of the crowd that had collected, she gave a fluttering cry and fainted away in the arms of the law.

* * * * *

When Miss Joe Hill arrived in New York, in answer to an urgent telegram, she went directly to work with her usual executive ability to unravel the mystery.  After obtaining the full facts in the case, she was able to make a satisfactory explanation to the officers at headquarters.  Then she sent the girls to their respective homes, and turned her full attention upon Miss Lucinda.

“The barber will be here in half an hour to cut your hair,” she announced on the eve of their departure for the Catskills.

“You ought not to be so good to me!” sobbed Miss Lucinda, who was lying limply on a couch.

Miss Joe Hill took her hand firmly and said:  “Lucinda, error and illness and disorder are man-made perversions.  Let the past week be wiped from our memories.  Once we are in the mountains we will turn the formative power of our thoughts upon things invisible, and yield ourselves to the higher harmonies.”

The next morning, Miss Lucinda, shorn and penitent, was led forth from the scene of her recent profligacy.  It was her final exit from a world which for a little space she had loved not wisely but too well.

CUPID GOES SLUMMING

It is a debatable question whether love is a cause or an effect, whether Adam discovered a heart in the recesses of his anatomy before or after the appearance of Eve.  In the case of Joe Ridder it was distinctly the former.