"Then let us go that way," responded Abbott stubbornly.

"Abbott," the school-director warned, "you'd better come on over to my place--I'm going there this instant to--to get a cup of tea. It'll be best for you, old fellow, you listen to me, now--you need a little er--a--some--a little stimulant."

"No," Abbott returned definitely. He had done nothing wrong, and he resented the accusing glances from across the way. "No, I'm going with Fran."

"And don't you bother about him," Fran called after the retreating chairman of the board, "he'll have stimulant enough."

CHAPTER XI

THE NEW BRIDGE AT MIDNIGHT

It was almost time for summer vacation. Like all conscientious superintendents of public schools, Abbott Ashton found the closing week especially fatiguing. Examinations were nerve-testing, and correction of examination-papers called for late hours over the lamp.

At such times, when most needing sleep, one sleeps least.

One strolls, at hours devoted by others to slumber. Abbott Ashton, for instance, had fallen into the reprehensible habit of bolting from the boarding-house, after the last paper had been graded, no matter how late the night, and making his way rapidly from town as if to bathe his soul in country solitude. Like all reprehensible habits this one was presently to revenge itself by getting the "professor" into trouble.

One beautiful moonlight night, he was nearing the suburbs, when he made a discovery. The discovery was twofold: first, that the real cause of his nightly wanderings was not altogether a weariness of mental toil; second, that he had, for some time, been trying to escape from the thought of Fran. He had not known this. He had simply run, asking no questions. It was when he suddenly discovered Fran in the flesh, as she slipped along a crooked alley, gliding in shadows, that the cause of much sleeplessness was made tangible.

Abbott was greatly disturbed. Why should Fran, be stealthily darting down side-alleys at midnight? The wonder suggested its corollary--why was he running as from some intangible enemy? He realized that the Fran-thought had been working in the under-layers of his mental processes all the time his upper crust had busied itself with rehearsals of "Beyond the Alps lies Italy" and the determination of Hamlet's madness. But now was no time for introspection, and he set himself the task of solving the new mystery. As Fran merged from the mouth of the alley, Abbott dived into its bowels, but when he reached the next street, no Fran was to be seen.

Had she darted into one of the scattered cabins that composed the fringe of Littleburg? At the mere thought, he felt a nameless shrinking of the heart. Surely not. But could she possibly, however fleet of foot, have rounded the next corner before his coming into the light? Abbott sped along the street that he might know the truth, though he realized that the less he saw of Fran the better. However, the thought of her being alone in the outskirts of the village, most a.s.suredly without her guardian's knowledge, seemed to call him to duty. Call or no call, he went.

It seemed to him a long time before he reached the corner. He darted around it--yonder sped Fran like a thin shadow racing before the moon.

She had taken the direction of the open fields, and so swiftly did she run, that the sound of his pursuit never reached her ears. She ran.

Abbott ran. It was like a foot-race without spectators.

At last she reached the bridge spanning a ravine in whose far depths murmured a little stream. The bridge was new, built to replace the footbridge upon which Abbott and Fran had stood on the night of the tent-meeting. Was it possible that the superintendent of instruction was about to venture a second time across this ravine with the same girl, under the same danger of misunderstanding, revealed by similar glory of moonlight? One may do even that, when duty calls--for surely it was a duty to warn this imprudent child to go home. Conscience whispered that it would not be enough simply to warn; he should escort her to Hamilton Gregory's very door, that he might know she had been rescued from the wide white night; and his conscience was possibly upheld by the knowledge that a sudden advent of a Miss Sapphira was morally impossible.

Fran's back had been toward him all the time. She was still unaware of his presence, as she paused in the middle of the bridge, and with critical eye sought a position mathematically the same from either hand-rail. Standing there, she drew a package from her bosom, hastily seated herself upon the boards, and, oblivious of surroundings, bent over the package as it rested in her lap.

Was she reading some love-sick romance by moonlight, or--or possibly a letter? Abbott, without pause, hurried up. His feet sounded on the bridge.

Fran was speaking aloud, and, on that account, did not hear him, as he came up behind her. "Grace Noir," she was saying--"Abbott Ashton--Bob Clinton--Hamilton Gregory--Mrs. Gregory--Simon Jefferson--Mrs.

Jefferson--Miss Sapphira--Fran--the Devil--" She seemed to be calling the roll of her acquaintances. Was she reading a list from the package?

Abbott trod noisily on the fresh pine floor.

Fran swiftly turned, and the moonbeams revealed a flush, yet she did not attempt to rise. "Why didn't you answer, when you heard your name called?" she asked with a good deal of composure.

"Fran!" Abbott exclaimed. "Here all alone at midnight--_all alone!_ Is it possible?"

"No, it _isn't_ possible," Fran returned satirically, "for I have company."

Abbott warmly urged her to hasten back home; at the same time he drew nearer and discovered that her lap was covered with playing-cards. His advice to her was all it should have been; the most careful father could have found no fault with his helpful words--all the same, he didn't understand about those cards.

Fran, looking down, listened with profound respectfulness, and when he had finished, she said, "It is so nice of you to care about me and worry over what people will think, so I'll go home with you just as soon as I tell the fortune of the cards. It won't take but a minute, and I'm awfully glad you came, for it was pretty scary here alone, I tell _you!_ The moon kept making big eyes at me, and the brook sounded like a death-call down there in the dark."

"But you mustn't stay here," he said imperatively. "Let us go at once."

"Just as soon as I tell the fortunes. Of course I wouldn't go to all this trouble for nothing. Now look. This card is Fran--the Queen of Hearts. This one is Simon Jefferson--and this one is Bob. And you--but it's no use telling all of them. Now; we want to see who's going to marry."

Abbott spoke in his most authoritative tone: "Fran! Get up and come with me before somebody sees you here. This is not only ridiculous, it's wrong and dreadfully imprudent."

Fran looked up with flashing eyes. "I won't!" she cried. "Not till I've told the fortunes. I'm not the girl to go away until she's done what she came to do." Then she added mildly, "Abbott, I just had to say it in that voice, so you'd know I meant it. Don't be cross with me."

She shuffled the cards.

"But why must you stay out _here_ to do it?" he groaned.

"Because this is a new bridge. I'd hate to be a professor, and not know that it has to be in the middle of a new bridge, at midnight, over running water, in the moonlight. Now you keep still and be nice; I want to see who's going to get married. Here is Grace Noir, and here is Fran..."

"And where am I?" asked Abbott, in an awed voice, as he bent down.

Fran wouldn't tell him.

He bent lower. "Oh, I see, I see!" he cried. _"This_ is me--" he drew a card from the pack--"the King of Hearts." He held it up triumphantly. "Well. And you are the Queen of Hearts, you said."

"Maybe I am," said Fran, rather breathlessly, "but whose hearts are we king and queen of? That's what I want to find out." And she showed her teeth at him.

"We can draw and see," he suggested, sinking upon one knee. "And yet, since you're the queen and I'm the king, it must be each other's hearts--"

He stopped abruptly at sight of her crimsoned cheeks.

"That doesn't always follow," Fran told him hastily; "not by _any_ means. For here are other queens. See the Queen of Spades? Maybe you'll get _her_. Maybe you want _her_. You see, she either goes to you, or to the next card."

"But I don't want any Queen of Spades," Abbott declared. He drew the next card, and exclaimed dramatically, "Saved, saved! Here's Bob. Give her to Bob Clinton."

"Oh, Abbott!" Fran exclaimed, looking at him with starlike eyes and roselike cheeks, making the most fascinating picture he had ever beheld at midnight under a silver moon. _"Do_ you mean that? Remember you're on a new bridge over running water."

Abbott paused uneasily. She looked less like a child than he had ever seen her. Her body was very slight--but her face was...It is marvelous how much of a woman's seriousness was to be found in this girl. She seemed inclined to give her words about the foolish cards a woman's significance. He rose with the consciousness that for a moment he had rather forgotten himself.

He reminded her gravely--"We are talking about cards--just cards."

"No," said Fran, not stirring, "we are talking about Grace Noir. You say you don't want her; you've already drawn yourself out. That leaves her to poor Bob--he'll have to take her, unless the Joker gets the lady--the Joker is named the Devil...So the game isn't interesting any more." She threw down all the cards, and looked up, beaming. "My!

but I'm glad you came."

He was fascinated and could not move, though as convinced as at the beginning that they should not linger thus. There might be fatal consequences; but the charm of the little girl seemed to temper this chill knowledge to the shorn lamb. He temporized: "Why don't you go on with your fortune-telling, little girl?"

"I just wanted to find out if Grace Noir is going to get you," she said candidly; "it doesn't matter what becomes of her. Were you ever on this bridge before?"

"Fran, Miss Grace is one of the best friends I have, and--and everybody admires her. The fact that you don't like her, shows that you are not all you ought to be."