tion now; only that fellow Selwyn is not here to-day, and
I thought if you wanted to look about a bit you could do it this
afternoon without chance of running into him and startling the whole
mess boiling."

"Is Captain Selwyn in town?" asked Ruthven, reddening.

"Yes; an agency man telephoned me that he's just back from Sandy Hook--"

The train began to move out of the station. Ruthven hesitated, then
stepped away from the passing car with a significant parting nod to
Hallam.

As the train, gathering momentum, swept past him, he stared about at the
snow-covered station, the guard, the few people congregated there.

"There's another train at four, isn't there?" he asked an official.

"Four-thirty, express. Yes, sir."

A hackman came up soliciting patronage. Ruthven motioned him to follow,
leading the way to the edge of the platform.

"I don't want to drive to the village. What have you got there, a
sleigh?"

It was the usual Long Island depot-wagon, on runners instead of wheels.

"Do you know the Willow Villa?" demanded Ruthven.

"Wilier Viller, sir? Yes, sir. Step right this way--"

"Wait!" snapped Ruthven. "I asked you if you knew it; I didn't say I
wanted to go there."

The hackman in his woolly greatcoat stared at the little dapper,
smooth-shaven man, who eyed him in return, coolly insolent, lighting a
cigar.

"I don't want to go to the Willow Villa," said Ruthven; "I want you to
drive me past it."

"Sir?"

"_Past_ it. And then turn around and drive back here. Is that plain?"

"Yes, sir."

Ruthven got into the closed body of the vehicle, rubbed the frost from
the window, and peeked out. The hackman, unhitching his lank horse,
climbed to the seat, gathered the reins, and the vehicle started to the
jangling accompaniment of a single battered cow-bell.

The melancholy clamour of the bell annoyed little Mr. Ruthven; he was
horribly cold, too, even in his fur coat. Also the musty smell of the
ancient vehicle annoyed him as he sat, half turned around, peeping out
of the rear window into the white tree-lined road.

There was nothing to see but the snowy road flanked by trees and stark
hedges; nothing but the flat expanse of white on either side, broken
here and there by patches of thin woodlands or by some old-time
farmhouse with its slab shingles painted white and its green shutters
and squat roof.

"What a God-forsaken place," muttered little Mr. Ruthven with a hard
grimace. "If she's happy in