"Peters," said Mr. Magee, "I'm surprised. After giving your word to stay! And who knows—you may be able to gather valuable data for your book. Stick around. These women won't bother you. I'll make them promise never to ask about the love-affair you didn't have—never even to come near you. And we'll pay you beyond the dreams of avarice of a Broadway chef. Won't we, gentlemen?"

The others nodded. Mr. Peters visibly weakened.

"Well—" he began. "I—" His eyes were on the stair. Mr. Magee also looked in that direction and saw the girl of the station smiling down. She no longer wore coat and hat, and the absence of the latter revealed a glory of golden hair that became instantly a rival to the sunshine in that drear bare room.

"No, Peters," she said, "you mustn't go. We couldn't permit it. Mamma and I will go."

She continued to smile at the obviously dazzled Peters. Suddenly he spoke in a determined tone:

"No—don't do that. I'll stay." Then he turned to Magee, and continued for that gentleman's ear alone: "Dog-gone it, we're all alike. We resolve and resolve, and then one of them looks at us, and it's all forgot. I had a friend who advertised for a wife, leastways, he was a friend until he advertised. He got ninety-two replies, seventy of 'em from married men advising against the step. 'I'm cured,' he says to me. 'Not for me.' Did he keep his word? No. A week after he married a widow just to see if what the seventy said was true. I'm mortal. I hang around the buzz-saw. If you give me a little money, I'll go down to the village and buy the provisions for lunch."

Gleefully Mr. Magee started the hermit on his way, and then went over to where the girl stood at the foot of the stairs.

"I promised him," he told her, "you'd ask no questions regarding his broken heart. It seems he hasn't any."

"That's horrid of him, isn't it?" she smiled. "Every good hermit is equipped with a broken heart. I certainly shan't bother him. I came down to get some water."

They went together to the kitchen, found a pail, and filled it with icy water from the pump at the rear of the inn. Inside once more, Mr. Magee remarked thoughtfully:

"Who would have guessed a week ago that to-day I would be climbing the broad staircase of a summer hotel carrying a pail of 

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