“Not so easily,” returned Miss Wren. “He wouldn’t blow up alone. He’d carry me up with him. I know his tricks and his manners.”

“Would he want to hurt you, do you mean?” asked Lizzie.

“Mightn’t exactly want to do it, my dear,” returned Miss Wren; “but a lot of gunpowder among lighted lucifer-matches in the next room might almost as well be here.”

“He is a very strange man,” said Lizzie, thoughtfully.

“I wish he was so very strange a man as to be a total stranger,” answered the sharp little thing.