"Excuse me," began Roy, leaning over the gate and taking off his broad brimmed straw hat, "do you know a boy named Rex Pell?"

He had decided that this would be the shortest way of getting at things.

The woman looked up quickly, resting her chin on the top of her broom handle.

"Do you think I look as if I knew much about boys?" she replied. "Well, I don't and I don't want to."

"Excuse me," said Roy, and he hurried on, glad to get away.

The next house was a larger one. There was a good deal of piazza around it and some pretensions were made at keeping the lawn in good condition.

Roy's knock at the door was answered so promptly that he was fain to believe that some one must have been peeping through the shutters watching his approach.

A tall woman with light hair received him very effusively.

"I've been expecting you," she said, with an expansive smile. "I thought you'd come on that train."

"This must be the place," thought Roy. "She knows Rex sent the dispatch and thought some of us would come on."

"I suppose you'd like to go straight up stairs?" she continued, when she had taken his hat and hung it on the stand in the hall.

"Yes, I would," and Roy's heart sank.

Rex must be sick, he decided, and not able to leave his bed. He followed the light haired woman to the floor above, where she threw open the door of a room with a sort of flourish.

Roy halted on the threshold. There was a double bed inside, but nobody on it nor was anybody to be seen in the apartment.

"Where is my brother?" he asked.

"Your brother?" exclaimed the woman. "I did not understand that there were two of you. Your father's letter mentioned only one son. Wait, I will get--"

"No, there must be some mistake," Roy interposed. "I thought my brother, Rex Pell, might be here."

"What, you are not Eric Levens, then?"

"No, indeed, and don't you know anything about my brother? I am so sorry."

"I thought you were the young gentleman I expected who was to look at this room to see whether he liked it well enough to stay while his father went to Europe. But why are you sorry that I do not know anything about your brother? Have you lost him?"

"In a sort of a way, yes," and Roy told his story, or as much of it as he could, without bringing in the fact of Rex's having run away from home.

"Oh, I guess I can help you," exclaimed the woman, when he had finished. "Maybe he is the young fellow who is staying at the Raynors'. I heard about it last Sunday at church."

"About it? About what?"

Roy's face grew pale. The woman looked a little uncomfortable.

"Don't be too anxious," she replied. "He must be better now if he could send a message. But he's had the intermittent fever. He was found on the piazza of the house one rainy evening about ten days ago by Florence Raynor. A trampish looking young fellow had carried him in out of the wet, and they say he's been devoted to him ever since."

"Where do the Raynors live?" asked Roy, already impatient to be off.

"Come here to the window and I can show you the house. It is clear at the end of this street beyond all the others. You can just see the chimneys above the trees."

Roy was soon hurrying away in the direction pointed out.

Although he feared that Rex might have been ill, the certainty of it made his heart very sore for his brother.

"Sick among strangers!" was his thought. "I wish mother had come with me."

A young girl was reading on the piazza when he opened the gate and walked up the path between the box hedges.

"Is my brother Rex here?" he said, pausing at the foot of the steps, his hat in his hand.

She had raised her head as the gate latch clicked, and now their eyes met. Even in that moment Roy noted how very pretty she was.

"You are the Roy that he sent the telegram to?" she exclaimed. Then paused suddenly, and blushed.

"Yes, I'm Roy, and I've had a hard time to find him. How is he?"

"He's better. He was asleep just now. If you will come in I will call mother."

"Rex has certainly fallen into good hands," thought Roy when he was left alone.

Mrs. Raynor came out in a mo............