does Williams, when he brings us his water-colours,
done in that fall-vacation at Bar Harbor, appreciate at its real value
our etching of an aeroplane lying across an English hedgerow! Even Miss
Fraenkel, I think, has no clear knowledge of Mrs. Carville's part in the
tragedy of that New Year's Night. I remarked early in this narrative
that Miss Fraenkel's importance in it was of the slightest. Her charming
enthusiasm was ever an ignis fatuus leading her into unprofitable
bye-ways of conjecture. We have, therefore, the superior position as
regards the vanished family who lived next door. We know, as I have
said, where they are gone; but we do not tell. It gives us a certain
rare aesthetic pleasure to keep our own counsel.

And I think I may say we are qualified, after New Year's Day, to keep
any secret, for we kept it from the Metropolitan Press when they invaded
us, a dozen strong, to "take our statements." We laugh over it now, that
sudden descent of New York "leg-men," breezy, businesslike,
well-dressed young gentlemen of the "clean-cut" type; but we were glad
enough when they were through asking for facts and photographs and
impressions, and had gone, leaving the porch rather mussed-up and the
snow in front as though a herd of buffaloes had trampled it. But even
this is to anticipate a little.

I have mentioned, somewhere, that our devotion to the purer and less
remunerative branches of our respective arts led us occasionally to take
a holiday. With a subconscious deference to the advice of our local
doctor, that "sedentary folks should sell their automobiles and take
long walks," our day's vacation sometimes took us into the country. We
had no automobile to sell, unfortunately; but otherwise we carried out
the venerable gentleman's instructions by starting early and returning
home late in a condition approaching collapse. We thus came to know
certain tracts of Passaic and Bergen Counties in a manner quite
impossible to the motorist. We struck off roads and took to the wooded
hills of the Deer Foot Range. We spent forenoons losing ourselves and
then, having eaten our sandwiches and drained our flasks, would pass the
rest of the day trying for a predetermined point, but generally emerging
into some unknown and delightfully unsuspected valleys of quietness;
Sleepy Hollows down which no headless horsemen had ever thundered to
startle the wild-fowl sailing low in the evening twilight, and over
which the moon would late