t night."

"Dreaming. That house has been empty since November. I happen to be the
caretaker."

Hillard went back to his cab, dazed. No one there last night? Come,
come; there was a mistake somewhere. It was out of the question that he
had been in another house. He would soon find out whether or not he had
dined there the night before.

"A cable-office!" he cried to the cabby. "Hurry!"

Once there he telephoned down-town and secured Sandford's cable address.
Then he filled out a blank which cost him ten dollars. Late that night
at the club he received his reply. It was terse.

You are crazy. House absolutely empty. SANDFORD.

CHAPTER VII

THE TOSS OF A COIN

Hillard made an inexcusably careless shot. It was under his hand to have
turned an even forty on his string. He grounded his cue and stood back
from the table. That was the way everything seemed to go; at tennis, at
squash, at fencing, at billiards, it was all the same. The moment
victory was within his grasp his interest waned. Only last night he had
lost his title as the best fencer in the club; disqualified in the
preliminaries, too, by a tyro who would never cease to brag about the
accident.

"I say, Jack, what's the matter with you, anyhow?" asked Merrihew, out
of patience. "A boy could have made that three-cushion, his hands tied
behind him."

"It was bad," Hillard agreed. "Perhaps I am not taking the interest in
the game that I formerly took."

"I should say not. You lost me fifty last night. Corlis has no more
right to cross foils with you than I have; and yet he goes in for the
finals, while you are out of it. Where's your eye? Where's your grip?"

Hillard chalked his cue silently.

"And when I make a proposition," pursued Merrihew, "to ride to the
Catskills and back--something you would have jumped at a year ago--you
shake your head. Think of it! Through unbroken roads, nights at
farm-houses, old feather beds, ice in the wash-basin, liver and bacon
for breakfast, and off again! Snow or rain! By George, you had a bully
time last year; you swore it was the best trip we ever took on the
horses. Remember how we came back to town, hungry and hardy as Arctic
explorers? Come on; everything is dull down-town. Where's your spirit of
adventure?"

"I'm sure I don't know where it is. Shall we finish the game?"

"Not if you're going to throw it like this," declared Merrihew. He was
proud of his friend's prowess in games of skill and str