interrupted Miss Chalmers sharply. "Is this the dock?"

For answer he stopped the engine and guided the boat alongside a low wharf, at the end of which burned the lantern they had seen.

"Witherbee's Island," he said as he reached to help her ashore.

Miss Chalmers sprang upon the wharf without aid and demanded her trunks. The boatman heaved them out methodically. He paused for an instant to study an inscription on the end of a particularly bulky and heavy one, and, when he had difficulty in deciphering it, reached for the lantern. He read:

ROSALIND CHALMERS, N.Y.

Then the trunk followed its mates.

"Anything more I can do?" he asked pleasantly.

"I should say not! I owe you something, I suppose?"

"Well, rather."

"How much?"

"Ten dollars."

"Ten dollars!" cried Miss Chalmers. "For what happened? After all that— Why, it's—"

She snapped her purse open and handed him a bill with an angry gesture. In fact she flung it at him. Anything to be rid of him, she thought. He pocketed the money with a chuckle.

"My name is Sam," he remarked as he stepped back into the boat. "Any time you need a launch, why—"

"I'll know whom not to engage," said Miss Chalmers, finishing the sentence.

The boatman laughed, started the engine, and headed across an open space in the river. Miss Chalmers glanced about her with a sigh of weary satisfaction. It was one o'clock, but she had arrived!

CHAPTER II

PAJAMAED VULGARIANS

That particular insular possession owned by Mr. Stephen Witherbee was, indeed, a dark corner of the earth. It was also insistently quiet and lifeless. Just which one of the insufficiently enumerated Thousand Islands it was did not concern Miss Chalmers in the least, any more than it concerns the reader. All she sought was shelter and a couch.

She walked the length of the little wharf and stared in among the trees that came down to meet it. Somewhere beyond was a house she knew—a house that contained Mr. and Mrs. Witherbee, Miss Gertrude Witherbee, perhaps Mr. Tom Witherbee, and various other persons who constituted a Witherbee house-party.

There was not the least doubt that they were all asleep. Miss Chalmers could not hear a sound save the ever-diminishing thump-thump of the one-cylinder launch.

"Asleep they are, certainly," she observed aloud. "I've done a ridiculous thing, of course. It serves me right for coming a day ahead of time. That boatman—ugh!

"Where the house is I haven't the least idea. But I can't stay here. I must find a place to sleep. Perhaps—just perhaps—somebody is up, after all."

She returned to the end of the wharf and surveyed her six trunks. "They'll do until morning," said Miss Chalmers as she picked up her grip and started in search of the Witherbee house.

There was a gravel path, beginning where the wharf met the shore, and Miss Chalmers followed it. Even in the gloom of the trees this was not difficult, for the gravel was white, and lay before her like a ghostly streak. Besides, it crunched under the twenty-dollar shoes.

Miss Chalmers was displeased with herself. She felt foolish. Something had gone wrong with her poise; something seemed to have been subtracted from the considerable sum of her dignity. The world was not playing flunky as usual. Her old austerity was there, perhaps, but it lacked confidence and authority.

The path forked, and Miss Chalmers paused to consider. The house was still invisible.

"Why does a strange path always fork when one is alone and in a hurry, and particularly at night?" asked Miss Chalmers aloud.

There was no answer; so, after an instant of indecision, she took the fork that led to the right. Naturally it was the wrong fork. It simply had to be, under the circumstances. It brought her back to the shore of the island, where a summer pavilion was erected on a rocky point.

She retraced her steps back to the fork and took the left branch of the gravel path. In not more than two minutes it guided her to the edge of a lawn. Beyond this she could see the house—a large, solid, black mass against a background of trees.

"Not a single light!" she exclaimed impatiently. "It's positively—uncouth!"

She crossed the lawn and paused again at the foot of a flight of steps that led to a broad piazza.

"It's almost as if the place was closed," she commented as her glance roved upward toward the windows. "But of course it's not. Oh, well!"

She ascended the steps, crossed the piazza, and found a push-button in the framing of a closed door. She pushed and waited—but not long; she was too impatient for dalliance.

Several times she pushed the button in rapid succession, holding her thumb upon it for extended periods. Nobody came to the door, which angered her anew. Then she realized that she herself could hear no ringing of a bell.

"Out of order, of course," she said bitterly.

She rapped smartly with her gloved knuckles upon the paneling of the door time after time until they ached. Then she dropped her grip, went back to the lawn, and looked up at the house again. It slept calmly.

Miss Chalmers made a circuit of the Witherbee dwelling. Not a ray of light filtered out of it from any side, not a sound—not even a snore. She returned to the front door and rapped again. Then, she seated herself in a porch-rocker and frowned.

"I absolutely will not shout," she told herself. "I am sufficiently absurd as it is. I will not be laughed at!"

She placed particular emphasis upon the last thought, as if somebody, somewhere, was displaying amusement at her plight. If there was one thing Rosalind Chalmers would not for an instant endure it was mirth of her own unintentional provoking. She was not a lady to be laughed at.

In the first place, she was too dignified, even to the point of a certain severity in manner. Where she lacked severity she substituted condescension. In the second place, she was too coldly handsome, too tall, too slimly erect. In the third place, she was too old—twenty-five. In the fourth place, she was a Vassar graduate. In the fifth place, she was too rich. In the sixth place—

Oh, why continue? It is already plain that under no circumstances was Miss Chalmers a lady to be laughed at, even by equals—to say nothing of a common river-man.

Yet she knew exactly what would happen when she succeeded in arousing the sleepers on Witherbee's Island. First, they would grumble and stumble and rub