wished he was a boy again," he
mused, "I always set him down for a liar. But, for once in my life, I
honestly wish I was a boy, once more. A boy one day younger and one
inch shorter and one pound lighter than Cyril. I'd follow him out of
doors, yonder, and give him the thrashing of his sweet young life.
I'd--"

"Oh, do call him back!" begged the Mistress. "He'll catch his death of
cold, and--"

"Why will he?" challenged the Master, without stirring. "For all his
noble rage, I noticed he took thought to grab up his cap and his
overcoat from the hall, as he wafted himself away. And he still had his
arctics on, from this afternoon. He won't--"

"But suppose he should really go over to one of the neighbors," urged
the Mistress, "and tell such an awful story as he threatened to? Or
suppose--"

"Not a chance!" the Master reassured her. "Now that the summer people
are away, there isn't an occupied house within half a mile of here. And
he's not going to trudge a half-mile through the snow, in this bitter
cold, for the joy of telling lies. No, he's down at the stables or else
he's sneaked in through the kitchen; the way he did that other time
when he made a grandstand exit after I'd ventured to lecture him on his
general rottenness. Remember how worried about him you were, that time;
till we found him sitting in the kitchen and pestering the maids? He--"

"But that time, he was only sulky," said the Mistress. "Not insanely
angry, as he is now. I do hope--"

"Stop worrying!" adjured the Master. "He's all right."

Which proved, for perhaps the trillionth time in history, that a
woman's intuitions are better worth following than a man's saner logic.
For Cyril was not all right. And, at every passing minute he was less
and less all right; until presently he was all wrong.

For the best part of an hour, in pursuance of her husband's counsel,
the Mistress sat and waited for the prodigal's return. Then,
surreptitiously, she made a round of the house; sent a man to ransack
the stables, telephoned to the gate lodge, and finally came into the
Master's study, big-eyed and pale.

"He isn't anywhere around," she reported, frightened. "It's dinner
time. He's been gone in hour. Nobody's seen him. He isn't on the Place.
Oh, I wonder if--"

"H'm!" grumbled her husband. "He's engineering an endurance contest,
eh? Well, if he can stand it, we can."

But at sight of the deepening trouble in his wife's face, he got up
from his desk. G