For a time Randolph Chance was fairly dazed by the suddenness with which his fortune changed. Yesterday it was down—deep down; to-day it had gone flying up. He had followed Constance Leigh when she walked to the lake in the afternoon; had helped her from a perilous place in the midst of rough winds and still rougher waves; and as he took her from the pier their eyes had met, and this was why, later on, he sat by his friend's fireside in a state of bewildered rapture.

An outsider, one of the world's common folk, would have made but little out of Randolph's brief, rough-hewn sentences. But Loveland was finely strung; he understood.

“I can't forget that look. It breaks me all up every time I think of it.”

Randolph spoke like a man who was talking to himself.

“It's so unreal—I may have dreamed it,” he went on slowly. “I tell you, Steve”—this with a sudden turn—“I don't dare to hope, but if——”

There was no perceptible tremor in his voice, but the sentence broke sharply.

“I know, old man, I know,” said Steve in his gentlest voice.

And he poked the fire softly between the ribs of the grate.

It seemed that Randolph's hope was not without foundation, for after he had been the toy of fate somewhat longer he came to Steve one night with great news, and yet no news to Steve, who had long discerned the signs of the times and had been dreading what he saw must come. Now, although he felt sharp pangs of grief on seeing his boon and sole companion snatched from him and about to be offered up upon the altar matrimonial, yet he rejoiced thereat with the full force of his unselfish nature.

On this especial night the two men sat beside the fire, and also beside some of the last oysters that would ever be served up with the spicy sauce of this same good comradeship. As befitted so memorable an occasion, the oysters were big fellows and were frying gloriously.

Randolph, who was in great good spirits, leaned over and lifted them carefully with a fork he held in hand.

“Here we are!” he exclaimed. “Things are done brown now!”

Then the two men looked up at each other and burst out laughing.

There was one important ceremony which Randolph felt must precede the marriage service, and that was the introduction of his bosom friend to his fiancÉe.

“I've been puzzling my brains to think how I can bring this about,” he said to Constance one day. “I've already hinted at it to Steve, but he don't take. I know he wants to meet you, but he's such a retiring fellow—not really bashful, but like a clam in his shell.”

“Don't distress yourself, I beg of you,” said Constance with a mischievous smile. “Mr. Loveland and I have already met and are now the best of friends.”

Randolph stared at her in open-mouthed amazement.

“Where?” he managed to ask.

“Right here in this parlor. I must tell you about it—it was most beautiful. His card took me by surprise, but I supposed you had brought him. When I came downstairs there he was, looking altogether different from your descriptions.”

“Well, I like that!” said Randolph. “Do you mean to impeach my statements?”

“Altogether better,” persisted Constance. “Yes, he is taller and has a most interesting face. He came forward to greet me without a particle of embarrassment, and there was something so manly and simple, and withal so high-bred in his every movement, that I was charmed. I know he must come of a fine family.”

“Oh, he does. He had a line of ancestors a mile long aboard the Mayflower. A cousin of his was telling me. He never said a word. He never talks.”

“Ah!” said Constance with an arch smile. “He talked that evening, I assure you, and to good effect. He had but a few moments to stay, but he made every moment tell. For one thing, he assured me, with a most winning smile, that he should feel constrained to rise in church and forbid the banns unless I promised to adopt him as a brother.”

Randolph's eyes and mouth opened again.

“Perhaps you'd better adopt him as something still nearer!” he said, with a pretense of anger.

“Now that you mention it,” Constance replied in a confidential tone, “I came very near doing so. The only reason I did not was that he forgot to ask me.”

Randolph broke into a laugh. Then he added in a puzzled tone:

“Well, it beats everything! In all the ten years I've known him I've never heard him say as much as that!”

“I can't repeat all he said——” Constance began again.

“What!” Randolph cried with another semblance of jealousy.

“No, because it lay in his manner; that gentle, affectionate, yet manly manner—indescribable! perfectly indescribable!”

“It's the same to everybody,” said Randolph, “and everybody loves him. I never knew another such fellow. It's past belief the way he wins people. And he says nothing, too.”

“Ah, but he does!” repeated Constance. “Well, well, there's no telling it all. I continually think of the word delightful in recurring to it and him. I assured him that he would be a member of our family, and that our fireside and our crust—I really didn't dare to promise more than a crust, you know, Randolph—would be his as well as ours. When he left he said good-by in the same perfectly easy, natural way, calling me Constance——”

“What?” Randolph exclaimed.

“And then he said, 'I am a brother now, you know,' and he bent and kissed me.”

“The dickens!” cried Randolph.

And Constance finished the sentence.

“He did. And really in the most delightful way,” she added naÏvely.

Shortly after this cementing of new bonds there was a quiet wedding ceremony one morning at the little suburban church, and when this was over Randolph and Constance were ready for their walk through life.

This walk—sometimes quickened into a jog trot and even into a lope, sometimes slackened till it becomes a crawl—is variously diversified, according to the temper and general disposition of the parties. In the present instance there was reasonable hope of some harmony of gait, but life is life, whether within or without the wedded fold, and “human natur' is human natur';” and although David Harum may tell us that some folks have more of this commodity than others, yet we know that every one has a lump of it, at least, and usually, thank God! a lump of leaven as well.

The first agitating question upon marriage is that of residence. Happily Randolph and Constance were agreed upon this point. Both were indifferent to the city; both were lovers of the country. Randolph had once read a certain sweet pastoral termed “Liberty and a Living,” and hardly a day had passed since the reading that he had not recalled it and speculated as to how he could adjust it to his own life.

The fact that the writer, like himself, was a journalist; that he broke loose from just such shackles as were wearing Randolph's pleasure in life, made it seem more possible to the latter, and now that he had joined hands with a woman of similar tastes, the experiment seemed really feasible.

“It's easy enough if we'll only think so,” said Randolph.

“It looks easy,” Constance replied more cautiously; “that's one reason why I am afraid of it. That proves to me that we don't know anything about it. If it were really so easy more people would try it. We're not the only ones who love the country.”

“I wonder more people don't try it,” Randolph exclaimed. “When I look around me in the train and see the care-worn, harassed faces the men wear, I wonder they don't break loose from their drudgery and go to living. What's the use of existing if you have to drudge continually for your bread, and must eat even that in debt half the time?”

“We may have to do without bread,” said Constance, smiling.

“Then we'll eat cake, as Marie Antoinette suggested,” Randolph responded promptly.

There really was some practical preparation for the proposed country life, although many of the plans seemed visionary enough. Randolph had long been considering an offer from a local magazine that would enable him to do most of his work at home, but the pay was smaller and less certain than he could wish. However, he at last decided to resign from the newspaper force with which he had for years been connected and to risk taking the other position.

Now, happily, he had done good, faithful work in his present place and was highly esteemed. Consequently, as soon as the editor of the paper learned why he was going and what he wanted, he offered him the editorship of the literary department in the Saturday issue, at a smaller salary than he had been receiving, to be sure, but still a larger and more certain one than he could earn on the magazine, and this he accepted and went on his way with much rejoicing.

“I'll only have to go into the city once a week now,” he said to Constance, “and my literary work at home won't require over three hours a day. That's something like living!”

Constance was as delighted as he, but she was more cautious and said less. She once remarked in this connection that she intended to borrow a motto from Steve's coat of arms—“Mum's the Word.”

During the past few years Randolph's expenses had been small and his earnings considerable; consequently he had quite a goodly sum in bank. With a portion of this he and Constance bought a small place in the country, happening on a genuine bargain, as one will if he has cash in hand. The house was little more than a cabin, and they decided to devote it to their servants—a married pair—while they built a cottage for their own use.

The latter deserves more than a passing word. Both Randolph and Constance had “Liberty and a Living” in mind when they planned it, and although it did not precisely repeat that charming little domicile, yet it was built in much the same style. The one big room—library, dining-room, and sometime kitchen combined—looked out from three sides. In the early morning it saw the clouds piled up in expectant glory over the way across the surging lake; toward evening its windows to the left blazed their farewell as day sailed into the west; while golden sunbeams played at hide-and-go-seek among its pretty furnishings throughout the midway hours. Even on cold, cloudy days there was still good cheer, for a big log fire crackled on the ample hearth beneath the oaken mantel, whereon a glowing iron had etched Cowper's invitation (who could say it nay?):

The very furnishings of this library were intellectually and spiritually appetizing. A large desk, off one side, bespoke brain work; a solid center-table, strewn with books and magazines, made one long for the glow of the big lamp and the leisure of the evening, while Constance's grand piano seemed to stir the very air with a dream of harmony. The room was lined with low book-cases; above Shakespeare stood his bust; above the many volumes on musical themes, busts of Beethoven and Wagner; pictures—not costly paintings, but engravings, photo-gravures, and etchings, scenes from other lands, sweet spiritual faces, suggestions of great lives—looked down from the walls; while over all, as a frieze to the oaken room, ran the words: “'Tis love that makes the world go round.”

To Steve Loveland this home seemed more like Paradise than mortal abode. He watched its building and making with as intense an interest as Randolph's and with far more of sentiment. Marriage to him meant Elysium—the inexpressible, the unattainable; more so than ever now. But whatever yearnings the sweet little nest awoke in the breast of this lonely outsider, his duty and purpose remained fixed.

In the fall of the year, when the grapes hung in luscious bunches on the slender vine; when country by-lanes were mellow with a wealth of sumach and maple coloring; when Nature was saying farewell in her own sweet way, at once so festive and so melancholy, then Constance and Randolph turned their backs on the din and confusion of the city, and seeking the happy woodlands, entered their own little home.

On that very same day Steve received a summons to his sister, who lived with her mother in the little country town. There he was witness to a short, sharp contest with pneumonia; then came a defeat; and then a quiet burial in the village churchyard; next a sinking from hour to hour of the invalid mother whose prop and stay had been taken from beneath her; a second calling of friends to the stricken home; and ere two weeks of absence had been told, Steve found himself alone in the world, as far as any near of kin were concerned.

His grief was quiet, but very poignant. The old bachelor lodgings became unendurable. Randolph had gone to a home of his own, and Steve could not sit there alone, listening to the clods of earth as they fell on mother and Mary.

Both Randolph and Constance stretched out tender, sympathizing hands to the lonely man, and would have been glad had he consented to widen their fireside circle by his presence, but beyond an occasional visit Steve did not feel that he could go to them. He had long been independent—he was over thirty now, and he was not ready to merge his life into the life of another household. Still less was he willing to intrude his continued presence upon a newly married couple. The life there was sacred to him, and although he felt himself next of kin, almost, to its inmates, he shrank from robbing them of their right to be alone.

Go somewhere he must, however, so he gathered a few of his effects and prepared for a flitting—where he hardly knew when he set out, but he chanced to alight in the domicile of some elderly friends, who were delighted to give him house and table room in their rather solitary home.

It chanced that Steve's new rookery (he was in the fourth story) was quite near Mrs. Lamont's handsome house, and Mrs. Lamont was the aunt of Nannie Branscome—bewitching, provoking, maddening Nannie Branscome; uncured, unbaked, indigestible little Nannie Branscome—and they met, to quote from Kate Douglas Wiggin, “every once in so often.”

Careless, irresponsible Nannie Branscome! growing wild in the garden.

But the cook was near at hand and the fire was lighted.

What manner of cook? A chef or a stupid mixer of messes?

Who knows?