stay. I'm frozen, and I've got to
go home and sleep with my window up. You're lucky," she went on to the
Dickys. "I dare say the air in here would scare us under a microscope,
but at least it is warm."

The Van Alstynes made a move to go, but Mr. Dicky frantically gestured
to them not to leave him alone, and Mrs. Sam sat down again sulkily. Mr.
Pierce picked up his cap.

"I'll take you back," he said to Miss Patty, and his face was fairly
glowing. But Miss Patty slipped her arm through mine.

"Come, Minnie, Mr. Pierce is going to take us," she said.

"I'd--I'd rather go alone," I said.

"Nonsense."

"I'm not ready. I've got to gather up these dishes," I objected.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the glow dying out of Mr.
Pierce's face. But Miss Patty took my arm and led me to the door.

"Let them gather up their own dishes," she said. "Dolly, you ought to be
ashamed to let Minnie slave for you the way she does. Good night,
everybody."

I did my best to leave them alone on the way back, but Miss Patty stuck
close to my heels. It was snowing, and the going was slow.

For the first five minutes she only spoke once.

"And so Miss Summers and Dicky Carter are old friends!"

"It appears so," Mr. Pierce said.

"She's rather magnanimous, under the circumstances," Miss Patty remarked
demurely.

"Under what circumstances?"

I heard her laugh a little, behind me.

"Never mind," she said. "You needn't tell me anything you don't care to.
But what a stew you must all have been in!"

There was a minute's silence behind me, and then Mr. Pierce laughed too.

"Stew!" he said. "For the last few days I've been either paralyzed
with fright or electrified into wild bursts of mendacity. And I'm not
naturally a liar."

"Really!" she retorted. "What an actor you are!"

They laughed together at that, and I gained a little on them. At the
corner where the path skirted the deer park and turned toward the house
I lost them altogether and I floundered on alone. But I had not gone
twenty feet when I stopped suddenly. About fifty yards ahead a lantern
was coming toward me through the snow, and I could hear a man's voice,
breathless and gasping.

"Set it down," it said. "The damned thing must be filled with lead." It
sounded like Thoburn.

"It's the snow," another voice replied, Mr. von Inwald's. "I told you it
would take two trips."

"Yes," Thoburn retorted, breathing in groans. "Stay up all night to get
the blam