"The package will keep—though I'm dying to know what is in it—but I must read this letter from my darling G——May, if you will excuse me." And May broke the seal of the dearly-loved brother's letter and began to read before the General could say a word.

It was a characteristic letter; as she read May seemed to see the writer dancing around the room like a will-o'-the-wisp, and speaking the written words without waiting for answer or comment.

"Oh!" sighed May, "Brown's foot is cut with an ax; he may have lockjaw."

"Who's Brown?"

"My twin bro—my twin, I mean. Uncle George calls him Brown and me Brownie because we're both brown, do you see?"

"Perfectly," remarked the General, who couldn't see at all.

"This," said May, undoing the package, "is Aunt Celia's photograph. She gave it to me. Brown says she's lovely—and so she is. She doesn't look a bit 'terrifying,' does she?"

"Not in the least," answered the General, who really knew nothing about it, for May had monopolized the photograph and he had not had as much as a glance at it.

"She looks like a little fairy godmother, doesn't she?" said May, passing the photograph to her uncle.

The General put on his glasses and looked at the photograph.

"What a resemblance!" he cried.

"To whom?" May asked, running to his side.

"To my mother."

"It is our Aunt Celia Linn who lives at Hazelnook where Ga—where Brown is."

The General became reflective. "I think I met Miss Celia Linn in my youth," he said, at length, "when she was a young girl, but I didn't notice the resemblance then and I cannot recall her face."

This was not strange; the General in his youth had studiously avoided looking at young girls long enough to impress their features upon his memory.

"Wouldn't you like to have her on your desk? She is so pretty and looks so much like your mother," said May, thinking her suggestion would please the General.

"I shall be very happy," said the General, bowing to the photograph, as though it was Miss Celia herself who had expressed a desire to occupy his desk. May gave the photograph a good position on the desk, and with a bird-like tip of her head which should have revealed to the dull General that his guest was of the gentler sex, she looked first at the photograph, then at the portraits on the wall, saying,—

"Isn't it nice to have an alive woman in the room, Uncle Harold? All the portrait people are dead, aren't they? They look so."

"Yes, all are dead."

"There ought to be a frame for it," said May, with true feminine instinct. "A pretty silver frame for such a pretty silver-haired lady. We might put a little vase of flowers beside it—some roses and mignonette."

"Very appropriate, indeed," said the General, to whom a rose by the name of hollyhock or petunia would have smelled quite as sweet.

"I will get them now," cried May, rushing out of the room.

The General, left alone, wrote a brief note to a New York firm, ordering a silver frame of the handsomest design (for "a silver-haired lady"), and he fancied all the time that he was doing this to please his supposed nephew, and perhaps he was.

"I've picked some roses, Miss Sarah," cried May through the kitchen window, "for a bouquet to put beside the loveliest lady. Her photograph is on Uncle Harold's desk and he likes it ever so much."

"Where did it come from?"

"Hazelnook. Wouldn't you like to see it?"

"No," said Sarah, shortly.

"There!" said May on her return to the library, "isn't that pretty?"

"Very," said the General, looking critically at the flowers held up for his inspection. "Where did you learn to put posies together so neatly?"

"I didn't learn," said May, blithely. "Such things are natural to girls, didn't you know that?"

"So I supposed; but I didn't know boys shared that faculty."

"Oh, Uncle Harold," cried the young culprit with a desperate attempt to change the subject, "when does my training begin?"

"At once, my boy, at once!" replied the delighted disciplinarian.

May began to feel sorry that she had mentioned the training, surrounded as it was by mystery, but it was too late to recall her words.

The General said, "Come," and they left the house together.

No sooner had they gone when Sarah sought the library.

"I should like to see the woman that has the brass to send her photograph to him," her thoughts ran. Despite the General's sixty-six years and his distaste for feminine society Sarah was constantly apprehensive lest he fall a victim to some wily woman's charms. "I've had trouble enough with him," she was wont to say, as though she had helped him through love-affairs innumerable!

It was with anything but agreeable emotions, therefore, that she took Miss Celia's photograph between her thumb and finger, holding it as if she expected something to rub off, and looked at it earnestly.

"Um," said Sarah, when her inspection was over, and she left the room without further comment. A little later she added, "It's his mother over again!"

"Where are we going, Uncle Harold?" May asked, as they walked briskly through the grounds.

"To the stables."

"What is he going to do to me?" May thought, ruefully.

When they reached the stable the General went to a glass case which held—horrors to relate!—a fine collection of fire-arms. Selecting two rifles, the General, with an inviting smile, extended one towards May. If there was anything that our little heroine in the hero's guise was really afraid of it was a rifle, or, indeed, arms of any kind, and her involuntary shrinking did not escape the General's eye.

"Why don't you take it?" he asked, with the nearest approach to sharpness that he had displayed since they had become "friends."

"I—don't want to," said May, huddling herself in a small bunch against the side of the barn.

The General did not lose his temper; fortunately, too, for had he done so May would have turned and fled, but his voice was stern, as he said,—

"Take that rifle and do as I bid you!"