esota and Wisconsin, and the weather grew
warmer and the spring further advanced. The snow was quite cleared
from the ground, and the willows beside the ditches in the fields were
beginning to show green sprouts. At nine o'clock in the evening, some
minutes after crossing the state line into Illinois, the train stopped
at a station where the last car was cut off.

A motor-ambulance and other limousine motor-cars were waiting in the
light from the station. Eaton, seated at the window, saw Santoine
carried out on a stretcher and put into the ambulance. Harriet
Santoine, after giving a direction to a man who apparently was a
chauffeur, got into the ambulance with her father. The surgeon and the
nurses rode with them. They drove off. Avery entered another
automobile, which swiftly disappeared. Conductor Connery came for the
last time to Eaton's door.

"Miss Santoine says you're to go with the man she's left here for you.
Here's the things I took from you. The money's all there. Mr.
Santoine says you've been his guest on this car."

Eaton received back his purse and bill-fold. He put them in his pocket
without examining their contents. The porter appeared with his
overcoat and hat. Eaton put them on and stepped out of the car. The
conductor escorted him to a limousine car. "This is the gentleman,"
Connery said to the chauffeur to whom Harriet Santoine had spoken. The
man opened the door of the limousine; another man, whom Eaton had not
before seen, was seated in the car; Eaton stepped in. Connery extended
his hand--"Good-by, sir."

"Good-by."

The motor-car drove down a wide, winding road with tall, spreading
trees on both sides. Lights shone, at intervals, from windows of what
must be large and handsome homes. The man in the car with Eaton, whose
duty plainly was only that of a guard, did not speak to Eaton nor Eaton
to him. The motor passed other limousines occasionally; then, though
the road was still wide and smooth and still bounded by great trees, it
was lonelier; no houses appeared for half a mile; then lights glowed
directly ahead; the car ran under the porte-cochere of a great stone
country mansion; a servant sprang to the door of the limousine and
opened it; another man seized Eaton's hand-baggage from beside the
chauffeur. Eaton entered a large, beamed and paneled hallway with an
immense fireplace with logs burning in it; there was a wide stairway
which the servant, who had appointed him