their eyes. Then they would shuffle to a window or a door and discover her. Then there would be surprise and hurry and a scene. And then—then, when everybody was thoroughly awake—would come the laughter. She reasoned it very logically and found no flaw in her conclusions.

"I will not wake them," she decided. "I will get into that house somehow, find myself a couch downstairs, and get my sleep. It's not that I mind waking them up; not a bit. But I won't be—"

She left the murmured sentence unfinished, arose from her chair, and walked briskly to the nearest window. The sash was either securely locked or thoroughly jammed, like a parlor-car window. She could not move it.

She tried the next window; the result was the same. A third window gave her no access to the dark interior of Witherbee House. She vented her annoyance in a sharp exclamation and turned the corner of the porch. The next window rattled encouragingly in its frame. It moved half an inch. She slipped the tips of her fingers under the sash, drew a deep breath, and heaved valiantly. The window ascended abruptly and with a clatter. And then—

A great bell clanged!

No decent, friendly, hospitable bell, but a raucous, brazen, mocking gong, pounded upon at the rate of a hundred or so strokes to the minute by a fiendish electric hammer.

The sound of the bell echoed in the gloom of the house and flung itself boisterously through the open window into the astonished and dismayed ears of Miss Chalmers. She fell back a step and raised her hands protectingly in front of her.

"A burglar-alarm!" she cried.

The din was appalling. It seemed to grow steadily in volume. Miss Chalmers was not truly frightened, but she was thoroughly amazed and startled. She was incontinently hurled from her pedestal of calm assurance.

For five seconds she hesitated. The bell boomed on. She stepped close to the window, placed her hands upon the sill, and leaned inward. From somewhere above she heard a heavy footstep, then a medley of sleepy voices.

She turned and ran.

She was dimly conscious in her precipitate retreat that, mingled with the clanging of the gong, there was another sound—a rattling of something on the porch floor. But it was not a propitious moment for investigation.

Around the corner of the porch she fled, upsetting a wicker table and scattering its burden of magazines. From its resting-place at the front door she scooped up her satchel. Down the steps to the lawn she leaped recklessly and then across the space of level sward.

Her skirt was not fashioned for running. With one hand she swept it up to her knees, a maneuver which added perhaps a knot to her speed. Give her a fair chance and Miss Chalmers was an excellent runner. She could even invest running with a certain stateliness and dignity—but not on this occasion.

Somebody had left a rocking-chair on the Witherbee lawn. She had not observed it when she approached the house, but now she fell over it. It bumped her knee cruelly, in addition to depositing her at full length upon the grass.

Within a second she was on her feet again, flaming with anger. She groped for her fallen satchel, recovered it, and ran on toward the shelter of the trees At the edge of the trees she paused and looked back. Lights were moving in the windows of Witherbee House. She heard voices, some shrill with alarm. Again she turned and fled.

Just why Miss Chalmers ran away from the haven of refuge she had been so long in reaching she could not clearly have explained. She was flurried in mind, yet not to such an extent as to dim the fact that her conduct was quite illogical. For fifteen minutes she had been trying to rouse the house; now that she had succeeded, she was in flight.

In among the trees she hesitated again. The simple and obvious thing to do was to walk straight back and announce herself. After that she would be in bed in ten minutes. But they might laugh. In fact, it was a certainty they would laugh. The alarm, the silly panic of a resolute lady, the chair on the lawn, her gown—oh, it was impossible. She ran once more, dodging among the trees and praying that she might find a path.

Presently she felt the gravel under her feet and followed the trail until it brought her back to the wharf, where her trunks crouched like black monsters in the faint light of the lantern. Here she paused to recover breath while she listened.

Through the little wood that had once seemed so dense she saw a glimmering of lanterns passing to and fro.

"I am not frightened!" panted Miss Chalmers hotly. "I am merely a fool! Yes—a complete fool! But they'll not find me—not now! Not for anything in the world! I'll go back; I'll find some way. I won't stay on this island. The whole thing is perfectly beastly and absurd!"

The moving lanterns among the trees seemed to be coming nearer. Men were calling to each other. She could hear footsteps on the gravel path.

There was no concealment on the wharf, yet Miss Chalmers was determined to be concealed. There could be no backing out now. She looked quickly about her.

Close to the wharf, at the very edge of the water, she now observed what looked like a boat-house. She sprang toward it and stepped out upon a small float that was anchored in front of it to find herself barred from refuge by padlocked doors.

The lanterns were now close to the wharf. Miss Chalmers had no time to waste picking a lock, even if she knew how. She slipped around the corner of the boat-house and flattened herself close against it, trying desperately to breathe noiselessly.

A moment later there was a shuffling of feet on the wharf, then an exclamation of surprise in a man's voice. Her curiosity urged her to risk a peep. Very cautiously she advanced her head beyond the corner of the building that screened her.

What Miss Chalmers saw shocked her. Three men in pajamas, each carrying a lantern, were standing upon the wharf. Their feet were shod in bedroom slippers. Two of them carried walking-sticks gripped tightly at the wrong end, evidently intended to perform service as clubs. The third had a revolver.

She was shocked, not because she regarded pajamas and bedroom slippers as improper, but because they seemed so utterly common, so plebeian, so lacking in anything that approached character or smartness or form—in short, to the eyes of Miss Chalmers they were sheer vulgarity, even though of possible utility. She shuddered a little.

One of the men she recognized; it was Mr. Witherbee. She was well aware that Mr. Witherbee was stout, but not until now did she realize that he actually bulged. It was the first time she had ever seen a fat man in pajamas, and she was impressed with the fact that the effect was more robust than artistic.

One of the other men was tall and blond, with a drooping mustache. His pajamas were far too short in the legs and his bare ankles were inelegant.

The other man had his back toward her. She thought he might be Tom Witherbee. He looked more fashionable than the others. It was also he who held the