ould sell 'em
round town for curiosities. Well, I can't be standin' here."

"If you're going home I'll go along with you. I may as well be getting
down toward the station. The excitement is about over."

"I ain't goin' right home, Mr. Hazeltine. I've got an errand to do.
Prob'ly I'll be goin' pretty soon, though."

"Oh, all right! I'll wait here a while longer then. See you later
perhaps."

The fog had lifted somewhat and as the Captain, running silently, turned
into the "shore road," he saw that the light in the Baxter homestead had
not been extinguished. The schoolhouse bell had ceased to ring, and the
shouts of the crowd at the fire sounded faintly. There were no other
sounds.

Up the driveway Captain Eri hurried. There were no lights in the lower
part of the house and the dining-room door was locked. The kitchen
door, however, was not fastened and the Captain opened it and entered.
Shutting it carefully behind him, he groped along to the entrance of the
next room.

"John!" he called softly. There was no answer, and the house was
perfectly still save for the ticking of the big clock. Captain Eri
scratched a match and by its light climbed the stairs. His friend's
room was empty. The lamp was burning on the bureau and a Bible was open
beside it. The bed had not been slept in.

Thoroughly alarmed now, the Captain, lamp in hand, went through one room
after the other. John Baxter was not at home, and he was not with the
crowd at the fire. Where was he? There was, of course, a chance that his
friend had passed him on the way or that he had been at the fire, after
all, but this did not seem possible. However, there was nothing to do
but go back, and this time the Captain took the path across the fields.

The Baxter house was on the "shore road," and the billiard room and
post-office were on the "main road." People in a hurry sometimes avoided
the corner by climbing the fence opposite the Baxter gate, going through
the Dawes' pasture and over the little hill back of the livery stable,
and coming out in the rear of the post-office and close to the saloon.

Captain Eri, worried, afraid to think of the fire and its cause, and
only anxious to ascertain where his friend was and what he had been
doing that night, trotted through the pasture and over the hill. Just
as he came to the bayberry bushes on the other side he stumbled and fell
flat.

He knew what it was that he had stumbled over the moment that he fell
across