“A son and a daughter.”

The officer began to laugh and finally said:

“They are a queer pair, that son and daughter. They travel around together late at night. I don’t know how many times I have seen them go into the house at two or three o’clock in the morning.”

“Coming home from parties and receptions and balls, I presume,” said Chick.

“Mebbe; but I don’t like that. It looks to me as if they had been roaming. Say, the daughter is a thoroughbred. She does almost anything a man does. She rides, and there isn’t any horse too bad for her. She rows a boat, she works in a gymnasium, and I know for sure that she’s taken boxing lessons. They say she’s awful good with her fists.”

“Is she straight?” asked Chick.

“Ain’t heard anybody say she wasn’t. She’s just queer; that’s all.”

This was all the officer could tell them, and, after a few more words, he strolled away.

The two young men stood a while longer conversing, and were themselves about to move away, when young Mr. Sanborn came tripping hurriedly along the pavement.

Chick stopped him, saying: