stronghold, and wherever possible searching private estates within a wide radius.

Perhaps ten miles from the yellow house, the Hoover place struck them as a possibility worth investigation. One of the great show places of the Hudson, it stretched three miles deep to the river-bank and a mile and a half along the road, with no guardians save the little old, old couple at the lodge. Accustomed, during the Hoovers' prolonged absence abroad, to curious sightseers, the old people welcomed the two young men beneath the winged marble lions of the entrance-gates and the grounds with a host-like courtesy.

But not a footprint, save that of an occasional stray gardener or of their rival searchers, the police, rewarded them; there were no marks of a boat upon the beach; the wooded shores, for a league on either side, yielded no clue.

Through three days they hunted-days and nights like phantoms of interchanging light and darkness, in which there was no real sense of time or place, rest or fatigue, but only futile movement, and for Herrick, a numbness that separated him from human affairs.

In Waybrook, only, they learned something. The Pascoes, contemptible as foreigners, but as small farmers acceptable yes, a young fellow and his mother, a real neat American lady with gray hair, and their Dago help-had had, off and on, an unpopular boarder: a city woman with red hair, who was supposed to come out there for quiet, for her health. No, hadn't ever seen her real close. So much too good for everybody

never passed good-morning

with any but her own friends, come now and then from the city. Going or coming, herself, she was tied up in one o' these automobile veils.

No one seemed to connect the Pascoes with the world-wide search for Christina. Whatever communication the mail had carried to the district attorney he gave no sign. Here and there indeed they stumbled upon the tracks of some experimenting detective; followed the same will-o'-the-wisp; ran down the same clue to nothing. On Saturday they gave it up.

And so, of course, it was on Saturday that capricious luck pointed out to Herrick, through a window of the table d'hôte, the figure of a little old woman with gray hair. Bonneted and shawled as she unwontedly

was, Mrs. Pascoe, as he now called her, was still playing solitaire; but not this time behind the desk. It was a little early for dinner; some of the tables were not yet set; and she sat at one of these, now and then leaning forward as if to talk to some one within the room. Herrick drew back unobserved, ran up the stoop, and rang the bell.

This was answered by one of the smaller children, to whom he made some excuse about an acquaintance up-stairs. But on reaching the door of that acquaintance he merely turned to look over the balusters till he was certain of the child's departure; then down he came again, soft-footed, into the basement. He felt a sick disappointment when he saw a crack of light in the hall from the door of the restaurant's front room; since it was even a thread ajar the old woman could not be talking secrets. And, indeed, he now heard her say, very much at her ease, "My! Men are funny!"

His

Herrick stood beneath a hinge and put a shameless eye to the crack. Save for the occasional entries of the Italian proprietress with the tableware, the only other person in the room was a smallish man in the early thirties, who looked as if he had once been a gentleman and whose regular, feminine little features were now drawn into an expression at once weak and wild. soft, helpless-looking figure writhed and twitched as he now lay down and now sat up upon a sort of lounge which ran along the wall, forming a seat for several tables. His face was swollen with weeping and the tears still flowed from his eyes. Herrick suddenly remembered the man who had hung about the Hopes' on the day of Christina's disappearance. Afterward he had been told that such a man waited long to see him at his rooms.

"Well, if you're goin' to take on that way, Filly," Mrs. Pascoe was saying, "I dunno as I can blame her any. I dunno as I blame her anyhow. You never objected when there was any money in it. It's kind o' late to carry on now. What say?"

The gentleman poured forth in Italian, which Mrs. Pascoe appeared to understand at least as well as he did English, that the lady he lamented had never wished to leave him before; hitherto, it had always been business. The business of the whole family he had never interfered with, but to be left for good and all he would not bear; he had

borne too much. And indeed, from his language, it appeared that he had.

"Well," repeated Mrs. Pascoe, "men are funny! You've hung on to my girl since she was sixteen years old, and she ain't ever treated you like anything but dirt. Well, what do you want to hang on to her for? Clear out. You ain't like me. I gotta stick. She don't want me either. She wants swift folks an' gay folks. She'd forget she was mine if she could. But she can't! An' I can't! I can't deny anything you got to say. You say she ruined your life. She'd ruin anybody's she could get her clutch onto. You say she don't love you. If you ask me, why should she? But it's herself she's thinkin' about first, last, an' all the time. You take it from me, you ain't goin' to sail. Or, anyway, not with us. You ain't ever been fit fer anything but a wife that 'ud take care o' you, an' yer quite a pretty-lookin' little feller. The best you kin do is to get some money out of her, an' let her get clean away."

The young man rolled back and forth and bit the lounge. Mrs. Pascoe, who had hitherto regarded him with contemptuous tolerance, observed a wave of genuine despair in this sea of grief and her eyes narrowed.

"See here, young man," she said, "don't let me catch you doin' anything underhanded-squealin' on us or tryin' to keep us here, 'cause we gotta get out. If I was to say a word to my son that I thought that, there wouldn't be no prettiness left to you. I ain't goin' to have her locked up in no jail for no man that ever lived. Mebbe you think, 'cause I speak harsh of her, I ain't fond of her. Why, you little fool, I ain't never had a thought but for that minx since she was born. She's walked on me an' on the whole blame lot of us ever since. But she's mine. What she wants she's goin' to have."

"False!" shrieked the Italian gentleman. "She's false!"

"Well, there," said Mrs. Pascoe, "so she is!" There was an exclamation and the proprietress of the table d'hôte reentered. "They come?" asked Mrs. Pascoe. "Well, it's as much as our lives 're worth, with them fools skiddin' round the roads; but we gotta get there somehow. There, get up, Filly, an' blow yer nose, do! Good-by, Maria. After we're gone don't neglect to send the children out on that visit. It'll do 'em

good. Come on, Filly; an' you mind what I tell you 'bout bein' anyways treacherous now. My daughter's my daughter, an' I won't have her hampered by no Dago!"

Herrick could hear a taxi snorting before the house, and he retreated hastily to the refuge of the cellar door. In the exhaustion of his nerves the new rapidity of events made his brain whirl. Through his mind jumbled pictures of the countryside, the yellow house at night, the long road rolling past. the little stone lions that spread their wings above the Hoover gates, the river-banks, Christina's garden, and all the wind and change and hurry of the week. To some point amidst all this whir these people were making. What means had he for keeping up with them? In a moment the taxi, unless he were lucky enough to spy another, would have them beyond reach. He crept out again into a cleared and quiet hall, the taxi still snorting at the door; but as he gained the area, he beheld the open cab and saw with amazement that it was empty. The Pascoes must have turned the corner into the square; but whether a 'bus or cross-town car was their object, all his hurry never determined.

With the patience of despair he returned to the restaurant as a legitimate guest, ordered his dinner, and began to chatter to his friend, the eldest girl. She looked a little run down; if he had a little girl like her he'd take her for a trip to the country. Oh, she was going to the country! Oh, indeedand out where Auntie was!

He wondered what his smile was like. The child brought him his plate of sliced sausage and sardines, and he made a game of sharing them with her. She would have a fine appetite at the seaside. Oh, she wasn't going to the seaside! Where then? Oh, it appeared, to a lovely, great big house

grass trees flowers! nothing more could be ascertained. Herrick tried the words "Waybridge" and "Bennings Point" to no avail. With "river" he was more successful. Did you go there by boat? Apparently not. Finally, it came out that you went there past Old Auntie's house. And what was there pretty about Old Auntie's house? Come, now, what did she like best?

"The marble kitties with wings."

The marble-! Herrick's face flushed a hot red. It was his lucky day, indeed! He pressed into her astonished hand the

money for his dinner and hurried into the street. That open taxi was just moving away from the house. As it passed under a street lamp a veiled lady rose in it to her tall height and drew on a long, light coat. And all the pulses in Herrick's body stopped as if they had been stricken dead. For his eyes had recognized Christina.

There was no other cab in sight. But fortunately a 'bus was just starting, and by and by he plunged from that into a taxi. All the way up Fifth Avenue he continued to keep his quarry well in sight; flashing in and out beneath the lamps, the beautiful tall figure sitting lightly erect, and neither shunning nor seeking the public gaze. At first he thought she had come back to be well in time for to-morrow night, but at Forty-second Street she turned toward the station. She, too, was for the train to Waybridge!

A policeman, who should have died before he ever was born, let her cab through the block and held up Herrick's. He saw with horror that it was possible he should miss the train; then, with a thrill of hope, that they would probably both miss it. When he got to the station there was no sign of her. He tore like a madman across the vast stretches and up and down the flights of stairs by which modern travel is precipitated, and came to the gate. She was inside, just stepping on the last car of the train. Officials were shouting at her, enraged, because the train had begun to creep.

"Tickets, tickets," said the man at the gate. He was resolute, and Herrick had to pick him up and lift him to one side. It took an instant, and now the train was under way. But Herrick, as a free-born male, unhampered even by a suit-case, was privileged to risk his neck, and he flew down the platform and gathered himself to leap upon the car. His hand was outstretched for the railing, but it never reached it. A single zealous employee plunged at him, roaring. The sound halted his quarry in the doorway, and when she saw him she stepped back onto the platform of the car, bending toward him with a look of eager amusement, and throwing back her veil. And Herrick lost his chance to jump.

For her face, framed in soft flames of red, of golden fire, was the face of a stranger. It was extremely lovely, but for one curious defect: she had a blue eye and a brown.

CHAPTER XXV

THE HOSTESS PREPARING

Two hours later Herrick lay in the long grass of the wooded lot against the wall of the Hoover estate. Already the night was velvet-black, and hot and thunder-scented as in summer. A million vibrations that were scarcely sound stirred with the myriad lives of leaf and blade in the dense silence.

He remembered, tumbling over the wall from the inside, cascades of ivy which he now hoped might give him a hand up the rough stone. But they tore away, one after the other, and sagged in his hold. He went on down the field, scouting in the darkness for some friendly tree; he found one at last but not so near the wall as he could have desired.

The first branch that seemed likely to bear him for any distance he judged to be about twenty feet above the ground. He crawled along it till its circumference seemed so slight he dared not trust another inch and peered into the pit. There was no way to make sure that the wall was there but to let go; he lowered himself the whole six feet of his length; let go; landed on the coping; by a miracle of balance maintained his equilibrium; and then, dropping cautiously to his knees, flattened himself along the edge. When you have dropped on to a wall which might or might not be there, it is nothing at all to drop on to the earth, which can not escape. He stood up at last within the Hoover grounds.

He had now to make his way to the house through about a mile of perfect blackness. As a good beginning he ran into a tree, and this rebuke of nature's seemed to put him in his place and tell him to walk here like a spy, not like a combatant. He went on, but now with infinite caution.

This part of the ground was as little tended as a wild wood. Presently, though, he came forth upon an old-fashioned garden, run wild, but still sending out sweet smells beneath his trampling feet. Beds of white gillyflowers and feverfew, and white banks of that odorous star-shaped bloom which opens to the night, made a kind of paleness in the dark which perhaps he rather breathed and guessed than saw. It was an approach for a Romeo, and seemed to cast a kind of dream over his desperate and grimy business. He sped on to another little grove

upon a rise of ground and, coming to the top of the slope, saw far ahead of him through the trees the shining of bright lights.

He could scarcely believe his eyes, for surely they would never dare to light the house. And then again he remembered how far and lonely that house stood, a mile and a half in from the road, and save through the lodge or from the river how hard to come at. If this was really their haunt, it must have been so a long time; they must have grown used to it like their own house. All the more chance then for his spying! He kept on down the slope, this time recklessly.

Suddenly the light of two lanterns began to rake the wood. Herrick stopped short, with revolver drawn, every muscle tense. Then three shots flew past him, apparently aimed only in his general direction. He dodged behind a huge tree, and felt his way cautiously from its shelter to another, working off at right angles to the direction of the lights. But they turned away as abruptly as they had come. Apparently the searchers had scouted their own fears, or had heard some sound from another direction.

Herrick followed the lights back toward the center of the estate, but did not risk going upright. Sometimes on his hands and knees, sometimes on his stomach, he made his way among the rocks.

The group with the lanterns came out upon the carriage-way and paused. A horse and two-seated wagon awaited them, the horse's head turned toward the house. In the wagon sat Mrs. Pascoe and the little old, old couple from the lodge. As the other men tumbled in, one diminutive creature lifted up his voice: "I ain't slep' out o' the lodge, nor yer ma ain't either, for forty year!"

"Well, you'll have to to-night, pa," said Mrs. Pascoe. "An' there ain't any time to talk about it either." They were off up the drive, Herrick following.

The party easily distanced him. After a while he ceased to hear the wheels, but now again he could see the house shine among the trees, and as he came closer still he listened for the sounds of their arrival, but heard nothing.

It was extraordinary what a stillness had again fallen upon the night. No sound covered his approach, and when he came at last in view of the great entrance, no wagon waited on the path nor did any voice challenge him from the doorway.

He stood among the trees and stared across the wide sweep of carriageway and saw, on either side, depths of lawn, kept cut and roughly trim, merging at last again into the darkness. The drive was bright from the great, glowing portico, and from the entrance doors set wide into a stately hall. The hall was all in order, as if for a reception, with rugs and palms and candelabra, and to its left a vast apartment like a ballroom flung from its long, open windows spaces of lamplight down the terraces.

Save for one pane gleaming overhead the rest of the house stood dark, as if unoccupied. cupied. But in that still yet quivering night, in that dense, black, vast, and yet sultry silence, this made a great illumination, and the wing of the old mansion seemed to blaze like a palace in a wood. In the lack of sound or motion, it seemed swept, opened, and made ready by enchantment, and waiting for the conqueror.

He was a fool, if you wish, but at least he knew his foolhardiness to the core. The wagon he had followed must have passed the house and gone on toward the river, but this bright vacancy and quiet had not been arranged for nothing. To go forward was more than likely death. But he was near the goal; he was near the turning of the page, and as far as might be, he must read it.

Thus at last he came up the terraces to the long windows and, huddling at one side, peered in. He saw a proud interior, brilliant and pale, with panels of latticed glass after the French fashion and other panels frescoed with Pierrots and Columbines and with great clusters of wax candles set between the panels. There was a great chandelier with swinging prisms reflecting in the floor that was waxed like satin. This chandelier was not lighted, but the clustered candles and the many lamps made the place afloat with liquid gold, and the room trembled and bloomed with the scent and the beauty of hothouse flowers.

There was little enough furniture: a golden grand piano with Cupids painted on it; a few chairs, from which Herrick guessed the holland had but lately been removed; and near the huge, rose-filled fireplace, a little table, gleaming with silver and linen, with lilies and crystal and lace. It was set for two; and there was a serving-table close at hand with silver covers showing on it and, for a practical and modern touch, a chafingdish! There was no one in the room.