For an interval he smoked in silence. 

 "Well," he asserted at length, "you've sure proved to-day that brains with trainin' are better'n brains without. Now if Jan an' me—" he broke off abruptly.  "There! I wonder what in tunket's become of Jan," he speculated.  "We've been so busy that he went clean out of my mind. It's queer he didn't show up again. He ain't stayed away for a whole day in all history. Mebbe he's took sick. I believe I'll trudge over there an' find out what's got him. I mustn't go to neglectin' Jan, inventin' or no inventin'." 

 He rose from his chair wearily. 

 "I reckon a note would do as well, though, as goin' over," he presently remarked as an afterthought.  "I could send one in the box an' ask him to drop round an' set a spell before bedtime." 

 He caught up a piece of brown paper from the workbench, tore a ragged corner from it, and hastily scrawled a message. 

 Bob watched the process with amusement. 

 "There!" announced the scribe when the epistle was finished.  "I reckon that'll fetch him. We'll put it in the box an' shoot it across to him." 

 Notwithstanding the dash implied in the term, it took no small length of time for the diminutive receptacle to hitch its way through the fields. The two men watched it jiggle along above the bushes of wild roses, through verdant clumps of fragrant bayberry, and disappear into the woods. Then they sat down to await Jan's appearance. 

 The twilight was rarely beautiful. In a sky of palest turquoise a crescent moon hung low, its arc of silver poised above the tips of the stunted pines, whose feathery outlines loomed black in the dusk. From out the dimness the note of a vesper sparrow sounded and mingled its sweetness with the faintly breathing ocean. 

 The men on the doorstep smoked silently, each absorbed in his own reveries. 

 How peaceful it was there in the stillness, with the hush of evening descending like a benediction on the darkening earth! 

 Bob sighed with contentment. His year of hard study was over, and now that his well-earned rest had come he was surprised to discover how tired he was. Already the peace of Wilton was stealing over him, its dreamy atmosphere almost too beautiful to be real. From where he sat he could see the trembling lights of the village jewelling the rim 

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