again.

"Didn't you--have another paper, Stuart?" The question came casually
from the chair into which he had collapsed. "I might as well put it with
the rest while I'm waiting for the brandy."

"Yes, I'd forgotten it. Here it is," and the younger man handed back the
envelope--this time using his left hand.

Once more Tollman's luck had held good.

Later in the analysis of retrospect Stuart began to wonder at his host's
strange behavior until of idle speculation suspicion was born, but as to
that circumstance he held his counsel.

The last summer month brings to the Cape the August twister and the
August tide. The twister seems to be a simultaneous rushing in of
tornado-like winds from every quarter and a whirling bluster of elements
gone mad. And in that month the high tide is the highest in the year.

For the household of Eben Tollman as well as for the weather the season
seemed charged with the unquiet influences of equinox.

In the older man himself the currents of hatred and jealousy were rising
to a danger line of unbalanced deviltry and as for the two who still
responded to the nameless yet invincible clarion of youth, the elements
of passion and insurgency were awake, ready for an August twister and an
August tide.

Then there befell the household a series of coincidental labor problems
that left them all at once without servants. The chauffeur, who hated
his employer, was summarily discharged for drunken insolence. The cook
was taken dangerously ill and her sister, the housemaid, went with her
to her home at Provincetown. The gardener and outside man alone remained
on duty and since both of these came and went from a distance,
Conscience and Stuart found themselves promoted to kitchen and pantry.

* * * * *

A day of bluster and storm had ended in a sunset of brilliant color,
which dyed the cloud-ramparted west with a victorious pageantry of
crimson and gold. The night would be different, for in the east the
moon, just climbing over the horizon, was a disc of pale tranquillity
dominating a symphony of blue and silver.

In the pantry, with windows giving to the east and west, Conscience was
washing dishes and Stuart, whose right hand was once more usable, stood
nearby drying them. Pausing, with her eyes first on the changing fires
of the west and then on the soft nocturne of the east, the woman spoke
softly:

"The sun and the moon are the same size, and the same dist