y face.
Furiously, blindly, madly it whirled here and drifted there.

Should I go for Sir Runan? Should I wait where I was? Should I whistle
for a cab? Should I return to the 'pike?

Suddenly out of the snow came a peal of silvery laughter. Philippa
waltzed gracefully by in a long ulster whitened with snow.

I detected her solely by means of my dark lantern.

I rushed on her, I seized her. I said, 'Philippa, come back with me!'

'No, all the fun's in the front,' shrieked Philippa. 'My quarter's
salary! Oh, my last quarter's salary!'

With these wild words, like bullets from a Gatling gun rattling in my
ears, I seized Philippa's hand.

Something fell, and would have rattled on the hard high road had it not
been for the snow.

I stooped to pick up this shining object, and with one more wild yell of
'My quarter's salary!' Philippa waltzed again into the darkness.

Fatigued with the somewhat exhausting and unusual character of the day's
performances, and out of training as I was, I could not follow her.

Mechanically, I still groped on the ground, and picked up a small chill
object.

It was a latch-key! I thrust it in my pocket with my other keys.

Then a thought occurred to me, and I chucked it over the hedge, to
serve as circumstantial evidence. Next I turned and went up the road,
springing my rattle and flashing my bull's-eye lantern on every side,
like Mr. Pickwick when he alarmed the scientific gentleman.

Suddenly, with a cry of horror, I stopped short. At my very feet, in the
little circle of concentrated light thrown by the lantern, lay a white
crushed, cylindrical mass.

That mass I had seen before in the warm summer weather--that mass, once
a white hat, had adorned the brows of that masher!

It was Sir Runan's topper!

CHAPTER IV.--As A Hatter!

YES, the white hat, lying there all battered and crushed on the white
snow, must be the hat of Sir Runan! Who else but the tigerish aristocrat
that disdained the homely four-wheeler and preferred to walk five
miles to his victim on this night of dread--who else would wear the gay
gossamer of July in stormy December?

In that hat, thanks doubtless to its airy _insouciant_ grace, he had won
Philippa; in that hat he would have bearded her, defied her, and cast
her off! The cruelty of man! The larger and bulkier crumpled heap which
lay on the road a little beyond the hat, that heap with all its outlines
already blurred by snow, that heap must be the