place was utterly deserted. The visitors
so strangely cast up from the sea had vanished as mysteriously as they
had come. There was the bed on which the girl had been lying--now it was
empty. Not even a vestige of her clothing remained to prove that she was
more than the figment of a crazed brain. Ichabod stared about him with
distended eyes. He could make no guess as to the meaning of the strange
thing that had befallen. Then, abruptly, his dazed mind was aroused to a
new calamity.... Shrimp, too, was gone!

Presently, Ichabod looked for the yacht's tender, and found it likewise
gone. He was able to understand in some measure what had occurred. The
batteries had been dried by the hot stove in the shack, and--the little
craft thus restored to running condition--the man had undoubtedly fled
with the girl. And with them Shrimp had voyaged. A sudden overwhelming
desolation fell on the old man. He had been through much that day. He
had been strained to the utmost resources of his energies. And he was an
old man. He had small reserves of force with which to meet the
unexpected. Now, he felt himself bewildered over all the strange
happenings. And there was something more. The one constant companion of
his lonely life was Shrimp--and Shrimp, too, had fled from him.

The Doctor, very much puzzled over this absence of an expected patient,
started to leave the shack. He halted at the head of the steps, and
looked down in a bewilderment touched with pity.

For Ichabod was on his knees before the steps of his own house, and his
form was shaken with the sobbings of despair.

CHAPTER IV

UNDER THE AFTER AWNING

Sidewalks along Fifth Avenue were packed with persons of all
nationalities, representatives of every variety of industrial activity
in the life of the City. There was a reviewing stand erected in front of
the massive library that displayed its lines of architectural beauty in
place of the sloping, age-gray walls of the old reservoir at Bryant
Square. City officials and families of officers in the troops soon to
pass were assembled there to witness this march of soldiers on their way
to entrain for the Mexican border. They were filled with the zeal of
patriots, because their comrades had been foully killed on that same
border by a treacherous foe, and they were being sent to avenge that
insult against the life and dignity of their nation.

Came the rhythmic beat of feet on the pavement; came the blare of the
ba