was Cynthia who had
brought him in.

"Why, that devil," said Whitwell, and Westover knew that he meant Jeff,
"went and piled on all the insurance he could pile on, before he left;
and I don't know what to do about it."

"I should think the best thing was to collect the insurance," Westover
suggested, distractedly.

"It a'n't so easy as what that comes to," said Whitwell. "I couldn't
collect the insurance; and here's the point, anyway. When a hotel's made
a bad season, and she's fully insured, she's pootty certain to burn
up some time in the winter. Everybody knows that comical devil wanted
lion's Head to burn up so 't he could build new, and I presume there
a'n't a man, woman, or child anywhere round but what believes I set her
on fire. Hired to do it. Now, see? Jeff off in Europe; daytime; no lives
lost; prop'ty total loss 's a clear case. Heigh? I tell you, I'm afraid
I've got trouble ahead."

Westover tried to protest, to say something in derision or defiance;
but he was shaken himself, and he ended by getting his hat and coat;
Whitwell had kept his own on, in the excitement. "We'll go out and see
a lawyer. A friend of mine; it won't cost you anything." He added this
assurance at a certain look of reluctance that came into Whitwell's
face, and that left it as soon as he had spoken. Whitwell glanced round
the studio even cheerily. "Who'd ha' thought," he said, fastening upon
the study which Westover had made of Lion's head the winter before,
"that the old place would 'a' gone so soon?" He did not mean the
mountain which he was looking at, but the hotel that was present to his
mind's eye; and Westover perceived as he had not before that to Whitwell
the hotel and not the mountain was Lion's Head.

He remembered to ask now where Whitwell had left his family, and
Whitwell said that Frank and Cynthia were at home in his own house with
Jombateeste; but he presumed he could not get back to them now before
the next day. He refused to be interested in any of the aspects of
Boston which Westover casually pointed out, but when they had seen the
lawyer he came forth a new man, vividly interested in everything. The
lawyer had been able to tell them that though the insurance companies
would look sharply into the cause of the fire, there was no probability,
hardly a possibility, that they would inculpate him, and he need give
himself no anxiety about the affair.

"There's one thing, though," Whitwell said to Westover when th