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 you would not be having guests, I’d enjoy coming with the Scout Master and sharing your fireside for an hour.”

“All right, then. Come any time you choose,” said the voice whose every cadence Jamie liked. “There never was a time when there wasn’t enough food on our table for one more and room to squeeze in one more chair. Come right along any time you’d like!”

Jamie hung up the telephone and looked around him. He was not in the mood for reading. He stepped into the kitchen and drank his daily quota of orange juice and when he reached the back door there was a call in the air, a call that he answered with his blood. He went down the back walk and out of the gate and to his particular mound of beach primroses. He stretched himself on the sand, pulled his hat over his eyes to shade them from the sun, fitted his figure into the curves of the mound, and presently he was unconscious in the unconsciousness of deep, sound, refreshing sleep.

By and by he awoke, and even before he was fully conscious, sniffed the air with questing nostrils. “That’s strange!” said Jamie to himself. “I chose this mound for its particularly inviting curve, but I didn’t see any sand verbena on it.”

Jamie drew a deep breath to be sure that he had not been mistaken as to the odour that was mingling with the primroses around him. He realized that so near to evening the verbenas would be opening to distill their sweetest fragrance. Then he opened his eyes and straightened up to look around him, and he discovered that his right hand