thick
clouds. The next moment he found himself awake, bolt upright in the icy
dusk of his room, listening.

"Mr. Marche! Won't you _please_ wake up and answer?" came the clear,
young voice again.

"I _beg_ your pardon!" he cried. "I'll be down in a minute!"

He heard her going away downstairs, and for a few seconds he squatted
there, huddled in coverings to the chin, and eying the darkness in a
sort of despair. The feverish drive of Wall Street, late suppers, and
too much good fellowship had not physically hardened Marche. He was
accustomed to have his bath tempered comfortably for his particular
brand of physique. Breakfast, also, was a most carefully ordered
informality with him.

The bitter chill smote him. Cursing the simple life, he crawled gingerly
out of bed, suffered acutely while hunting for a match, lighted the
kerosene lamp with stiffened fingers, and looked about him, shivering.
Then, with a suppressed anathema, he stepped into his folding tub and
emptied the arctic contents of the water pitcher over himself.

Half an hour later he appeared at the breakfast table, hungrier than he
had been in years. There was nobody there to wait on him, but the dishes
and coffee pot were piping hot, and he madly ate eggs and razor-back,
and drank quantities of coffee, and finally set fire to a cigarette,
feeling younger and happier than he had felt for ages.

Of one thing he was excitedly conscious: that dreadful and persistent
dragging feeling at the nape of his neck had vanished. It didn't seem
possible that it could have disappeared overnight, but it had, for the
present, at least.

He went into the sitting room. Nobody was there, either, so he broke his
sealed shell boxes, filled his case with sixes and fives and double B's,
drew his expensive ducking gun from its case and took a look at it,
buckled the straps of his hip boots to his belt, felt in the various
pockets of his shooting coat to see whether matches, pipe, tobacco,
vaseline, oil, shell extractor, knife, handkerchief, gloves, were in
their proper places; found them so, and, lighting another cigarette,
strolled contentedly around the small and almost bare room, bestowing a
contented and patronizing glance upon each humble article and decoration
as he passed.

Evidently this photograph, in an oval frame of old-time water gilt, was
a portrait of Miss Herold's mother. What a charming face, with its
delicate, high-bred nose and lips! The boy, Jim, had he