It was the room of a Spartan or a soldier.  In one corner stood a wide, canvas-covered cot; in another, a small bookcase; in another, a grim stand of Winchesters and shotguns.  An immense table, strewn with letters, papers and documents and surmounted by a set of pigeon-holes, occupied one side.

The centipede showed genius in concealing himself in such bare quarters.  Mrs. Maclntyre was poking a broom-handle behind the bookcase.  Octavia approached Teddy’s cot.  The room was just as the manager had left it in his hurry.  The Mexican maid had not yet given it her attention.  There was his big pillow with the imprint of his head still in the centre.  She thought the horrid beast might have climbed the cot and hidden itself to bite Teddy.  Centipedes were thus cruel and vindictive toward managers.

She cautiously overturned the pillow, and then parted her lips to give the signal for reinforcements at sight of a long, slender, dark object lying there.  But, repressing it in time, she caught up a glove, a pearl-gray glove, flattened—­it might be conceived—­by many, many months of nightly pressure beneath the pillow of the man who had forgotten the Hammersmiths’ ball.  Teddy must have left so hurriedly that morning that he had, for once, forgotten to transfer it to its resting-place by day.  Even managers, who are notoriously wily and cunning, are sometimes caught up with.

Octavia slid the gray glove into the bosom of her summery morning gown.  It was hers.  Men who put themselves within a strong barbed-wire fence, and remember Hammersmith balls only by the talk of miners about sluice-boxes, should not be allowed to possess such articles.

After all, what a paradise this prairie country was!  How it blossomed like the rose when you found things that were thought to be lost!  How delicious was that morning breeze coming in the windows, fresh and sweet with the breath of the yellow ratama blooms!  Might one not stand, for a minute, with shining, far-gazing eyes, and dream that mistakes might be corrected?

Why was Mrs. Maclntyre poking about so absurdly with a broom?

“I’ve found it,” said Mrs. MacIntyre, banging the door.  “Here it is.”

“Did you lose something? asked Octavia, with sweetly polite non-interest.

“The little devil!” said Mrs. Maclntyre, driven to violence.  “Ye’ve no forgotten him alretty?”

Between them they slew the centipede.  Thus was he rewarded for his agency toward the recovery of things lost at the Hammersmiths’ ball.

It seems that Teddy, in due course, remembered the glove, and when he returned to the house at sunset made a secret but exhaustive search for it.  Not until evening, upon the moonlit eastern gallery, did he find it.  It was upon the hand that he had thought lost to him forever, and so he was moved to repeat certain nonsense that he had been commanded never, never to utter again.  Teddy’s fences were down.