"Oh, quite well. And free. You know--nothing standoffish, or anything like that. Well, the storm came up again during the night, and we couldn't get home, and it was only a small farm house so some of us had to sleep in the hayloft, and Nellie said she'd be a dead game sport----"

"Now Frank, don't tell me any more. I don't believe it. . . . . . . .

What happened next?"

"Oh, nothing much. It was about noon when we got home, and the old man was pretty sore, but I told him I thought a good deal of Nellie and wouldn't mind marrying her if it came to that, and I asked her to come over here and visit us next summer----"

"You're lying, Frank. Let's go home."

As we walked home in silence, trailing our sleigh, the nip of the late afternoon stung our cheeks to roses and our breaths trailed behind like the gaseous tail of a very young and leisurely comet. Jean complained that one of her hands was growing cold so I took the mitten off it and drew the hand down into my deep, warm over-coat pocket, where we took all precautions against frost-bite. The other hand had to take a chance.

We walked along the bottom of the gully for shelter from the wind which was rising with sunset. As we neared Twenty-two Jean stopped.

"Frank, I want to ask you a question," she said. "There was no truth in that story you told me?"

"You care?"

"Of course I care. Tremendously."

"Don't you want me to be big?"

"Not that way. I've been talking about intellectual things--spiritual things."

"I suppose Spoof's bathing suit, with the white and yellow, is quite spiritual?"

"That isn't fair."

"Oh yes it is. It is merely the other ox getting gored."

"Anyway, your story wasn't true? You made it up to tease me?"

"If I answer your question will you answer mine?"

"I can't Frank, I can't--not now. I haven't seen Spoof since Christmas.

Perhaps he's sick. Perhaps he's dead. Something awful may have happened."

"His smoke goes up every morning just the same."

"Oh, you've been watching it, too. But something has happened. I--I can't answer you now."

At the door of Jack's house we paused again. We were in the shadow there, and as she turned on the step her form swung close to mine. For a moment I seized her, no longer able to play the semi-Platonic. . . . . .

"But there was no truth in it, was there?" she whispered.

"There was some truth in it," I confessed, as I turned toward the empty shack on Fourteen.

CHAPTER XXI.

Next morning I was stirring my oatmeal and water when the door opened and in burst Jack. His attire gave evidence of haste; he had thrown a pea-jacket about a somewhat incomplete toilet. I was about to summon up a jocular remark when something in his face silenced me.

"Have you seen Jean?" he demanded.

"No. Why----"

"She's not in her room. Gone. Was there last night--part of the night----"

"Sure she's not in the house?"

"Hard to lose her in our two-by-four, Frank. Not at the stables--I've hunted. It's snowing, and the wind is rising; there's no trail."

This was serious. Jack sat down, and, as though oppressed with heat, threw open his pea-jacket and exposed his undershirt.

Jean gone!

In a moment he sprang to his feet again and seized me by the arm. His grip was stronger than he knew. "She's not here, Frank? Straight now, Frank, she's not here?"

I turned my open palms toward him. "If only she were!" I exclaimed. . .

. . . . "When did you miss her?"

"Ten--fifteen minutes ago, when I got up. I found my lamp out of oil, and I went to her room to borrow hers. She didn't answer, and I went in.

She wasn't there. Her coat and cap are gone. How she got out without waking us!"

He turned to a window, peering through a little bare spot in the pane close to the sash. "Looks like a rough day," he said, quietly, as though trying to disguise the import of his words . . . . . . . . "She's been melancholy of late; trying to hide it, but I could tell . . . . . . . My G.o.d, she may have been gone for hours!"

"Then it's time we were after her!" I exclaimed, a sudden impulse for action bringing me out of my stupor. I shoved my burning porridge to the back of the stove and rushed to my room to complete dressing. And in my head was pounding one word, Spoof--Spoof--Spoof!

"Where?" Jack demanded, from the door of my room. "What's your guess?"

But I was already becoming an artist, that artist that Jean so eagerly sought in me.

"Just two places," I said. "She's gone to Mrs. Alton's or to Mrs.

Brown's. I don't think she would go to Lucy Burke's--didn't know them so well."

Jack's look of relief was pathetic. I had always thought of Jack as being in some way my superior, born to rule while I was born to obey.

Suddenly I found him a child in my hands.

"You think so?" he grasped at my words. "You think--that's--where she's gone?"

"Nothing surer. We talked a good deal about Mrs. Alton yesterday." I added, out of the fulness of my invention, "and she said how lonely Mrs.

Alton must be, and that we ought to go over and see her. She's started worrying over that in the night and it's got on her mind--upset her a bit. Still, it might be Brown's. The danger is that she may be lost in this storm. Hustle back and finish dressing, and then strike for Mrs.

Alton's. I'll try Brown's first, then Jake's, then Burke's. Hustle!"

It was new business for me to order Jack, but he needed ordering to keep him from utter futility at that moment. I gave his hand a squeeze and thrust him out of the door.

"Now, Mr. Spoof--now for you!" I snapped to myself. I had a revolver, an old rusty weapon which I never used, but which I kept lying around in case of something which I called an emergency. Clearly this was it. I found it and some cartridges and thrust them into my overcoat pocket; then drew it out and studied it with a peculiar sort of fascination.