Free New Name by Grace Livingston Hill Page A

from the wreck, you know.”
    “Thank you,” said the young man dryly. “Much too interesting for me. I’ll just get over to my trunk, if you don’t mind,” he suggested soothingly. “Which way is the house? I won’t have any trouble finding it. It’s not far away, you say?”
    “Oh no, it’s right here,” she said excitedly with a vague wave ofher hand. “Come right across the lawn. It’s shorter. I don’t mind running over in the least. In fact, I’ve got to go and see if I can’t borrow another vase for some roses that just arrived. You must be very tired after such an exciting afternoon. Was it very terrible at first? The shock, I mean?”
    “Oh! Terrible? Yes, the wreck. Why, rather unpleasant at first, you know. The confusion and—and—”
    “I suppose the women all screamed. They usually do when they are frightened. I never can see why. Now, I never scream. When I’m frightened I’m just as cool. My father says he can always trust me in a crisis because I keep still and do something. You look as if you were that way, too. But then men are, of course.”
    She was steering him swiftly toward a neat Queen Anne house of somewhat ancient date, perhaps, but very pretty and attractive, in spite of the fact that the maples with which it was surrounded were bare of leaves. There were little ruffled curtains at the window, and plants, and old-fashioned lamps with bright shades, and a gray-haired woman moving about in a bay window watering a fern. It was a picture of a sweet, quiet home, and something of its peace stole out into the November night with its soft lights like a welcome. Murray looked with hungry eyes. There would be beds in that house, and warmth, and a table with good things to eat. The bite he had stolen had only whetted his appetite. How good if he had a right to enter this home as the boy who was expected would do soon, welcomed, a festive supper prepared, perhaps a place where he might earn enough to live, and friends to makelife worth the living. It was the first time in his life he had ever felt an urge to work. His father’s business had seemed a bore to him. He had pitied him now and then when he happened to think of it at all, that he was old and had to go downtown every day to “work”—not that he had to. Murray knew his father could retire a good many times over and not feel it. But he had pitied him that he was old and therefore had nothing to interest him in life but dull business. Now business suddenly seemed a haven to be desired.
    But all this was merely an undercurrent of thought while he was really casting about in his mind how he might rid himself of his pest of a girl, and was furtively observing the street and the lay of the bushes that he might suddenly dodge away and leave her in the darkness. He hesitated to do it lest she might even pursue him, and he felt that in case of fleeing his strength would probably leave him altogether, and he would drop beside some dreary bush and be overtaken.
    He could not quite understand his attitude toward this girl. He had been somewhat of a lady-killer, and no girl had held terrors for him in the old life. He knew they always fell for him, and he could go any way he liked and they would follow. Now here was a girl, just a common little country girl, filling him with terror. She seemed to possess almost supernatural power over him, as if she had eyes that could see through to his soul and would expose him to the scorn of the world if he for one moment angered her and let her get a chance to look into his poor shaken mind. Murray Van Rensselaer! Why, Murray, what’s the matter with you? he said to himself. And then, But I’m not Murray Van Rensselaer anymore. I’m a murderer fleeing from justice! I must get away!
    Then right before him, what he thought was a long french window turned into a glass door and opened in front of his unwilling feet, and there stood in the broad burst of light the woman with the gray hair whom he had