e crowded lobby and out to the curb where
his cab was waiting. The driver noticed nothing strange in his fare's
appearance. He noticed nothing strange when the Atkins residence was
reached and its tenant mounted the stone steps and opened the door
with his latchkey. But, if he had seen the dignified form collapse in a
library chair and moan and rock back and forth until the morning hours,
he would have wondered very much indeed.

Meanwhile Captain Cy, coughing and shivering by the radiator, had been
summoned from that warm haven by a knock at his door. A bell boy stood
at the threshold, holding a brown envelope in his hand.

"The clerk sent this up to you, sir," he said. "It came a week ago. When
you went away, you didn't leave any address, and whatever letters came
for you were sent back to Bayport, Massachusetts. The clerk says you
registered from there, sir. But he kept this telegram. It was in your
box, and the day clerk forgot to give it to you this afternoon."

The captain tore open the envelope. The telegram was from his lawyer,
Mr. Peabody. It was dated a week before, and read as follows:

"Come home at once. Important."

CHAPTER XX

DIVIDED HONORS

The blizzard began that night. Bayport has a generous allowance of
storms and gales during a winter, although, as a usual thing, there is
more rain than snow and more wind than either. But we can count with
certainty on at least one blizzard between November and April, and about
the time when Captain Cy, feverish and ill, the delayed telegram in
his pocket and a great fear in his heart, boarded the sleeper of the
East-bound train at Washington, snow was beginning to fall in our
village.

Next morning, when Georgianna came downstairs to prepare Bos'n's
breakfast--the housekeeper had ceased to "go home nights" since the
captain's absence--the world outside was a tumbled, driving whirl of
white. The woodshed and barn, dimly seen through the smother, were but
gray shapes, emerging now and then only to be wiped from the vision as
by a great flapping cloth wielded by the mighty hand of the wind. The
old house shook in the blasts, the windowpanes rattled as if handfuls of
small shot were being thrown against them, and the carpet on the floor
of the dining room puffed up in miniature billows.

School was out of the question, and Bos'n, her breakfast eaten, prepared
to put in a cozy day with her dolls and Christmas playthings.

"When DO you s'pose U