“This being grown-up is a sort of Promised Land,” he said, “and it is always just over the edge of the World.  You’ll never be as nice again, Bab, as you are just now.  And because you are still a little girl, although `plited,’ I am going to kiss the tip of your ear, which even the lady who ansers letters in the newspapers could not object to, and send you up to bed.”

So he bent over and kissed the tip of my ear, which I considered not a sentamental spot and therfore not to be fussy about.  And I had to pretend to go up to my chamber.

I was in a state of great trepidation as I entered my Residense, because how was I to capture my prey unless armed to the teeth?  Little did Carter Brooks think that he carried in his pocket, not a Revolver or at least not merely, but my entire future.

However, I am not one to give up, and beyond a few tears of weakness, I did not give way.  In a half hour or so I heard Carter Brooks asking George for a whisky and soda and a suit of father’s pajamas, and I knew that, ere long, he would be

     In pleasing Dreams and slumbers light. 
     —­Scott.

Would or would he not bolt his door?  On this hung, in the Biblical phraze, all the law and the profits.

He did not.  Crouching in my Chamber I saw the light over his transom become blackness, and soon after, on opening his door and speaking his name softly, there was no response.  I therfore went in and took my Revolver from his bureau, but there was somthing wrong with the spring and it went off.  It broke nothing, and as for Hannah saying it nearly killed her, this is not true.  It went into her mattress and wakened her, but nothing more.

Carter wakened up and yelled, but I went out into the hall and said: 

“I have taken my Revolver, which belongs to me anyhow.  And don’t dare to come out, because you are not dressed.”

I then went into my chamber and closed the door firmly, because the servants were coming down screaming and Hannah was yelling that she was shot.  I explained through the door that nothing was wrong, and that I would give them a dollar each to go back to bed and not alarm my dear parents.  Which they promised.

It was then midnight, and soon after my Familey returned and went to bed.  I then went downstairs and put on a dark coat because of not wishing to be seen, and a cap of father’s, wishing to apear as masculine as possable, and went outside, carrying my weapon, and being careful not to shoot it, as the spring seemed very loose.  I felt lonely, but not terrafied, as I would have been had I not known the Theif personaly and felt that he was not of a violent tipe.

It was a dark night, and I sat down on the verandah outside the fatal window, which is a French one to the floor, and waited.  But suddenly my heart almost stopped.  Some one was moving about inside!

I had not thought of an acomplice, yet such there must be.  For I could hear, on the hill, the noise of my automobile, which is not good on grades and has to climb in a low geer.  How terrable, to, to think of us as betrayed by one of our own MENAGE!