s it mean?" and Mr. Birtwell,
now fairly awake, started up in bed and sat listening. Scarcely a
moment intervened before the bell was pulled again, and this time
continuously for a dozen times. Springing from the bed, Mr. Birtwell
threw open a window, and looking out, saw two policemen at the door.

"What's wanted?" he called down to them.

"Was there a young man here last night named Voss?" inquired one of the
men.

"What about him?" asked Mr. Birtwell.

"He hasn't been home, and his friends are alarmed. Do you know where he
is?"

"Wait, returned Mr. Birtwell; and shutting down the window, he dressed
himself hurriedly.

"What is it?" asked his wife, who had been awakened from a heavy
slumber by the noise at the window.

"Archie Voss didn't get home last night."

"What?" and Mrs. Birtwell started out of bed.

"There are two policemen at the door."

"Policemen!"

"Yes; making a grand row for nothing, as if young men never stayed away
from home. I must go down and see them. Go back into bed again,
Margaret. You'll take your death o' cold. There's nothing to be alarmed
about. He'll come up all right."

But Mrs. Birtwell did not return to her bed. With warm wrapper thrown
about her person, she stood at the head of the stairway while her
husband went down to admit the policemen. All that could be learned
from them was that Archie Voss had not come home from the party, and
that his friends were greatly alarmed about him. Mr. Birtwell had no
information to give. The young man had been at his house, and had gone
away some time during the night, but precisely at what hour he could
not tell.

"You noticed him through the evening?" said one of the policemen.

"Oh yes, certainly. We know Archie very well. He's always been intimate
at our house."

"Did he take wine freely?"

An indignant denial leaped to Mr. Birtwell's tongue, but the words died
unspoken, for the image of Archie, with flushed face and eyes too
bright for sober health, holding in his hand a glass of sparkling
champagne, came vividly before him.

"Not more freely than other young men," he replied. "Why do you ask?"

"There are two theories of his absence," said the policeman. "One is
that he has been set upon in the street, robbed and murdered, and the
other that, stupefied and bewildered by drink, he lost himself in the
storm, and lies somewhere frozen to death and hidden under the snow."

A cry of pain broke from the lips of Mrs. Birtwell,