unusual sensation in his hand, lying on the bedspread. He glanced at
it and then sat up with a sudden jerk that almost threw him off his
balance. In his upturned palm was a rose--a salmon-colored rose,
slightly crushed, but fresh and fragrant, with a flame-colored,
crumply heart. Varick stared at it, shut his eyes, opened them, and
stared again. It was still there, and, with the discovery that it was,
Varick became conscious of a prickling of the scalp, a chill along the
spine. His brown face whitened.

"Well, by all the gods!" he gasped. "How did that thing get here?"

No one ever told him. Possibly no one could except the Dream Woman,
and her he never saw again; so the mystery was unfathomable. He put
the rose between the leaves of the Bible his mother had given him when
he went to college, and which he had not opened since until that
morning; and the rose became dry and faded as the years passed, quite
as any other rose would have done.

Varick paid a second and quite casual visit to his medical friend, who
scoffed at him rudely and urged him to go on a long hunting trip. He
went, and was singularly successful, and came back with considerable
big game and a rich, brown complexion. When the doctor asked him
whether he still awoke from his innocent slumbers to find his little
hands full of pretty flowers, Varick swore naturally and healthfully,
turned very red, and playfully thumped the medical man between the
shoulders with a force that sent that gentleman's eye-glasses off his
nose. But, notwithstanding all these reassuring incidents, Varick has
never married; and he remains deeply interested as to the source of
that rose. He would be very grateful to any one who could tell him
where the thing came from. The nearest he ever came to this was when a