rcles, knowing that
wherever his feet led him the siren still held him by the heels.

As a rule, when Winnie Keep was dressing for dinner, Fred, in the room
adjoining, could hear her unconsciously and light-heartedly singing
to herself. It was a habit of hers that he loved. But on this night,
although her room was directly above where he sat upon the terrace, he
heard no singing. He had been on the terrace for a quarter of an hour.
Gridley, the aged butler who was rented with the house, and who for
twenty years had been an inmate of it, had brought the cocktail and
taken away the empty glass. And Keep had been alone with his thoughts.
They were entirely of the convict. If the man suddenly confronted him
and begged his aid, what would he do? He knew quite well what he would
do. He considered even the means by which he would assist the fugitive
to a successful get-away.

The ethics of the question did not concern Fred. He did not weigh his
duty to the State of New York, or to society. One day, when he had
visited "the institution," as a somewhat sensitive neighborhood prefers
to speak of it, he was told that the chance of a prisoner's escaping
from Sing Sing and not being at once retaken was one out of six
thousand. So with Fred it was largely a sporting proposition. Any man
who could beat a six-thousand-to-one shot commanded his admiration.

And, having settled his own course of action, he tried to imagine
himself in the place of the man who at that very moment was endeavoring
to escape. Were he that man, he would first, he decided, rid himself
of his tell-tale clothing. But that would leave him naked, and in
Westchester County a naked man would be quite as conspicuous as one in
the purple-gray cloth of the prison. How could he obtain clothes? He
might hold up a passer-by, and, if the passer-by did not flee from
him or punch him into insensibility, he might effect an exchange of
garments; he might by threats obtain them from some farmer; he might
despoil a scarecrow.

But with none of these plans was Fred entirely satisfied. The question
deeply perplexed him. How best could a naked man clothe himself? And as
he sat pondering that point, from the bushes a naked man emerged. He was
not entirely undraped. For around his nakedness he had drawn a canvas
awning. Fred recognized it as having been torn from one of the row-boats
in the lake. But, except for that, the man was naked to his heels. He
was a young man of Fred's ow