the blackness.
"The Goddess of Liberty, as I live! What's your next imitation?"

"There seems to be something doing," said Mr. Magee.

Mr. Bland came into the light, partially disrobed, his revolver in his
hand.

"Somebody trying to get in by the front door," he explained. "I shot at
him to scare him away. Probably one of your novelists."

"Or Arabella," remarked Mr. Magee, coming down.

"No," answered Bland. "I distinctly saw a derby hat."

With Mr. Magee descended the yellow candlelight, and brushing aside the
shadows of the hotel office, it revealed a mattress lying on the floor
close to the clerk's desk, behind which stood the safe. On the mattress
was the bedding Magee had presented to the haberdasher, hastily thrown
back by the lovelorn one on rising.

"You prefer to sleep down here," Mr. Magee commented.

"Near the letters of Arabella--yes," replied Bland. His keen eyes met
Magee's. There was a challenge in them.

Mr. Magee turned, and the yellow light of the candle flickered wanly
over the great front door Even as he looked at it, the door was pushed
open, and a queer figure of a man stood framed against a background of
glittering snow. Mr. Bland's arm flew up.

"Don't shoot," cried Magee.

"No, please don't," urged the man in the doorway. A beard, a pair of
round owlish spectacles, and two ridiculous ear-muffs, left only a
suggestion of face here and there. He closed the door and stepped into
the room. "I have every right here, I assure you, even though my arrival
is somewhat unconventional. See--I have the key." He held up a large
brass key that was the counterpart of the one Hal Bentley had bestowed
upon Mr. Magee in that club on far-off Forty-fourth Street.

"Keys to burn," muttered Mr. Bland sourly.

"I bear no ill will with regard to the shooting," went on the newcomer.
He took off his derby hat and ruefully regarded a hole through the
crown. His bald head seemed singularly frank and naked above a face of
so many disguises. "It is only natural that men alone on a mountain
should defend themselves from invaders at two in the morning. My escape
was narrow, but there is no ill will."

He blinked about him, his breath a white cloud in the cold room.

"Life, young gentlemen," he remarked, setting down his bag and leaning a
green umbrella against it, "has its surprises even at sixty-two. Last
night I was ensconced by my own library fire, preparing a paper on the
Pagan Renaissance. To-night I a