on of a seventh
son friend here has read my palm O. K. I want to go back. Not in the
summer, when the inn blazes like Broadway every evening, and I can sit
here and listen to the latest comic opera tunes come drifting up from
the casino, and go down and mingle with the muslin brigade any time I
want, and see the sympathetic look in their eyes as they buy my postals.
It ain't then I want to go back. It's when fall comes, and the trees on
the mountain are bare, and Quimby locks up the inn, and there's only the
wind and me on the mountain--then I get the fever. I haven't the
post-card trade to think of--so I think of Ellen, and New York.
She's--my wife. New York--it's my town.

"That's why I can't come among you to cook. It'd be leading me into
temptation greater than I could stand. I'd hear your talk, and like as
not when you went away I'd shave off this beard, and burn the manuscript
of _Woman_, and go down into the marts of trade. Last night I walked the
floor till two. I can't stand such temptation."

Mr. Peters' auditors regarded him in silence. He rose and moved toward
the kitchen door.

"Now you understand how it is," he said. "Perhaps you will go and leave
me to my baking."

"One minute," objected Mr. Magee. "You spoke of one lie--your
masterpiece. We must hear about that."

"Yes--spin the yarn, pal," requested Mr. Max.

"Well," said the hermit reluctantly, "if you're quite comfortable--it
ain't very short."

"Please," beamed Miss Norton.

With a sigh the Hermit of Baldpate Mountain sank upon a most unsocial
seat and drew his purple splendor close.

"It was like this," he began. "Five years ago I worked for a fruit
company, and business sent me sliding along the edges of strange seas
and picture-book lands. I met little brown men, and listened to the soft
swish of the banana growing, and had an orchestra seat at a revolution
or two. Don't look for a magazine story about overthrown tyrants, or
anything like that. It's just a quiet little lie I'm speaking of, told
on a quiet little afternoon, by the sands of a sea as blue as Baldpate
Inn must have been this morning when I didn't show up with breakfast.

"Sitting on those yellow sands the afternoon I speak of, wearing carpet
slippers made for me by loving, so to speak, hands, I saw Alexander
McMann come along. He was tall and straight and young and free, and I
envied him, for even in those days my figure would never have done in a
clothing advertisement,