for a time; then he said, "And you don't
know anything about the way they're living?"

"No, I don't," said Pinney, with final candor. "But I should say they
were living along there about as usual. Mr. Hilary didn't say but what
they were. I guess you haven't got any cause to be uneasy on that score.
My idea is, Mr. Northwick, that they wanted to leave you just as free as
they could about themselves. They wanted to find out your whereabouts in
the land of the living, first of all. You know that till that letter of
yours came out, there were a good many that thought you were killed in
that accident at Wellwater, the day you left home."

Northwick started. "What accident? What do you mean?" he demanded.

"Why, didn't you know about it? Didn't you see the accounts? They had a
name like yours amongst the missing, and people who thought you were not
in it, said it was a little job you had put up. There was a despatch
engaging a Pullman seat signed, T. W. Northwick--"

"Ah! I knew it!" said Northwick. "I knew that I must have signed my real
name!"

"Well, of course," said Pinney, soothingly, "a man is apt to do that,
when he first takes another. It's natural."

"I never heard of the accident. I saw no papers for months. I wouldn't;
and then I was sick--They must have believed I was dead!"

"Well, sir," said Pinney, "I don't know that that follows. My wife and
myself talked that up a good deal at the time, and we concluded that it
was about an even thing. You see it's pretty hard to believe that a
friend is dead, even when you've seen him die; and I don't understand
how people that lose friends at a distance can ever quite realize that
they're gone. I guess that even if the ladies went upon the theory of
the accident, there was always a kind of a merciful uncertainty about
it, and that was my wife's notion, too. But that's neither here nor
there, now, Mr. Northwick. Here you are, alive and well, in spite of all
theories to the contrary--though _they_ must have been pretty well
exploded by your letter to the _Events_--and the question is what answer
are you going to let me take back to your family? You want to send some
word, don't you? My instructions were not to urge you at all, and I
won't. But if I was in your place, I know what _I_ should do."

Northwick did not ask him what it was he would do. He fell into a deep
silence which it seemed to Pinney he would never break; and his face
became such a blank that all Pinn