e smacking of
soft, glutinous lips. Or as if some soft body drew itself from a bed of
clinging mud. I wondered idly if the tide could run this far back from
Long Island Sound.

The house reiterated the impression of welcoming me. I shut and locked
the old door behind me, and went up to the room I had chosen as my own.
There I unshuttered and opened the windows, lighted one of the candles I
had brought and set it on a little bookcase filled with dingy volumes,
and threw my blankets on the bed. I had moved in!

My pleasant sense of proprietorship continued to grow. Before I thought
of sleep, I had been through the house several times from cellar to
attic and accumulated a list of things to be done. Back in my room, an
hour passed in revising the list, by candle-light.

Near ten o'clock, I rolled myself in a dressing-gown and my blankets,
spread an automobile robe over the four-posted bed, and fell asleep.

CHAPTER II

"Beware of her fair hair, for she excels
All women in the magic of her locks."
--SHELLEY (_Trans._).

It trailed suavely through my fingers, slipping across my palm like a
belt of silk. It glided with the noiseless haste of a thing in flight.
Quite naturally, even in the dazed moment of awakening I closed my hand
upon it. It was soft in my grasp, yet resilient; solid, yet supple. If I
may speak irrationally, it felt as if it must be fragrant. It was a
strange visitor to my experience, yet I recognized its identity
unerringly as a blind man gaining sight might identify a flower or a
bird. In brief, it was--it only could be an opulent braid of hair.

When I grasped it, it ceased to move.

In the dense darkness of my bedroom, I lay still and considered. I was
alone, or rather, should have been alone in the old house I had bought
the day before. The agent assured me that it had been unoccupied for
years. Who, then, was my guest? A passer-by seeking refuge in a
supposedly deserted house would hardly have moved about with such silent
caution. A tramp of this genus would be a rarity indeed. I had nothing
with me of value to attract a thief. The usual limited masculine
jewelry--a watch, a pair of cuff-links, a modest pin--surely were not
sufficiently tempting to snare so dainty a bird of prey as one wearing
such plumage as I held. I have not a small fist, yet that braid was a
generous handful. How did it come to trail across my bed, in any case?
And why was i