few minutes makes even the house look
different. Outside, I can get accustomed to it, in this five-minute
inspection. But, inside--oh, to be invisible while I get used to it!
Well, here goes!"

"Ding-a-ling-ting-ting!" rang the bell somewhere back in the recesses
of the house, and the footsteps of a man approached the door. Amidon
was frightened. He had expected either Elizabeth herself, or a maid to
take his card, and was prepared for such an encounter only. A little
dark, bright-eyed man opened the door and seized his hand.

"Why, Brassfield, how are you?" he exclaimed. "Heard you'd got back.
Sorry I couldn't meet you in New York. Got my telegram, I suppose?"

"I just called," said Amidon, "to see Miss Waldron."

"Oh, yes!" said the little man; "nothing but her, now. But she isn't
here. Hasn't been for over a week. Nobody here but me. Can't you
stay a while? Say, 'Gene, we put Slater through the lodge while you
were gone, and he knows he's in, all right enough. Bulliwinkle took
that part of yours in the catacombs scene, and you ought to have heard
the bones of the early Christians rattle when he bellered out the
lecture. 'Here, among the eternal shades of the deep caves of death,
walked once the great exemplars of our Ancient Order!' Why, it would
raise the hair on a bronze statue. And when, in the second, they
condemned him to the Tarpeian Rock, and swung him off into space in the
Chest of the Clanking Chains, he howled so that the Sovereign Pontiff
made 'em saw off on it, and take him out--and he could hardly stand to
receive the Grand and Awful Secret. Limp as a rag! But impressed?
Well, he said it was the greatest piece of ritualistic work he ever
saw, and he's seen most of 'em. Go to any lodges in New York?"

"No," said Amidon, who had never joined a secret order in his life,
"and do you think we ought to talk these things out here?"

"No, maybe not," said the Joiner; "but nobody's about, you know. Come
in, can't you?"

"No, I must really go, thank you. By the way," said Florian, "where
does Miss--er--I must go, at once, I think!"

"Oh, I know how it is," went on his unknown intimate; "nothing but
Bess, now. Might as well bid you good-by, and give you a dimit from
all the clubs and lodges, until six months after the wedding. You'll
be back by that time, thirstier than ever. By the way, that reminds
me: the gang's going to give you a blow-out at the club. Kind of an
_Auld lang sy