"Please look once more," I begged, "and don't expect not to see it. I can
fairly see it myself, this minute, standing up there on the right-hand
side, just behind the machine oil can."

"Oh, I'll look," he promised. "If it's there, I'll find it."

He returned penless. I considered buying another. But we were planning to
go up together the last week of the hunting season, and I thought I would
wait on the chance.

We got off at the little station and hunted our way up, making great
sweeps and jogs, as hunters must, to take in certain spots we thought
promising--certain ravines and swamp edges where we are always sure of
hearing the thunderous whir of partridge wings, or the soft, shrill
whistle of woodcock. At noon we broiled chops and rested in the lee of the
wood edge, where, even in the late fall, one can usually find spots that
are warm and still. It was dusk by the time we came over the crest of the
farm ledges and saw the huddle of the home buildings below us, and quite
dark when we reached the house. Fires had been made and coals smouldered
on the hearth in the sitting-room.

"You light the lamp," I said, "and I'll just take a match and go through
to see if that pen _should_ happen to be there."

"No use doing anything to-night," said Jonathan. "To-morrow morning you
can have a thorough hunt."

But I took my match, felt my way into the next room, past the fireplace,
up to the cupboard, then struck my match. In its first flare-up I glanced
in. Then I chuckled.

Jonathan had gone out to the dining-room, but he has perfectly good ears.

"NO!" he roared, and his tone of dismay, incredulity, rage, sent me off
into gales of unscrupulous laughter. He was striding in, candle in hand,
shouting, "It was _not there!_"

"Look yourself," I managed to gasp.

This time, somehow, he could see it.

"You planted it! You brought it up and planted it!"

"I never! Oh, dear me! It pays for going without it for weeks!"

"_Nothing_ will ever make me believe that that pen was standing there when
I looked for it!" said Jonathan, with vehement finality.

"All right," I sighed happily. "You don't have to believe it."

But in his heart perhaps he does believe it. At any rate, since that time
he has adopted a new formula: "My dear, it may be there, of course, but I
don't see it." And this position I regard as unassailable.

One triumph he has had. I wanted something that was stored away in the
shut-up town house.

"Do yo