pes seemed to flit about him as he lighted a
candle. They whispered in his ear that this was to have been the scene
of achievement; that here he was to have written the book that should
make his place secure. Ah, well, fate had decreed it otherwise. It had
set plump in his path the melodrama he had come up to Baldpate to avoid.
Ironic fate, she must be laughing now in the sleeve of her kimono.
Feeling about in the shadows Magee gathered his things together, put
them in his bags, and with a last look at number seven, closed the door
forever on its many excitements.

A shivering group awaited him at the foot of the stair. Mrs. Norton's
hat was on at an angle even the most imaginative milliner could not have
approved. The professor looked older than ever; even Miss Thornhill
seemed a little less statuesque and handsome in the dusk. Quimby led the
way to the door, they passed through it, and Mr. Magee locked it after
them with the key Hal Bentley had blithely given him on Forty-fourth
Street, New York.

So Baldpate Inn dropped back into the silence to slumber and to wait. To
wait for the magic of muslin, the lilt of waltzes, the tinkle of
laughter, the rhythm of the rockers of the fleet on its verandas, the
formal tread of the admiral's boots across its polished floors, the
clink of dimes in the pockets of its bell-boys. For a few brief hours
strange figures had replaced the unromantic Quimby in its rooms, they
had come to talk of money and of love, to plot and scheme, and as they
came in the dark and moved most swiftly in the dark, so in the dark they
went away, and Baldpate's startling winter drama took reluctantly its
final curtain.

Down the snowy road the five followed Quimby's lead; Mr. Magee picturing
in fancy one who had fled along this path but a short time before; the
others busy with many thoughts, not the least of which was of Mrs.
Quimby's breakfast. At the door of the kitchen she met them, maternal,
concerned, eager to pamper and to serve, just as Mr. Magee remembered
her on that night that now seemed so long ago. He smiled down into her
eyes, and he had an engaging smile, even at four-thirty in the morning.

"Well, Mrs. Quimby," he cried, "here is the prodigal straight from that
old husk of an inn. And believe me, he's pretty anxious to sit down to
some food that woman, starter of all the trouble since the world began,
had a hand in."

"Come right in, all of you," chirruped Mrs. Quimby, ushering them int