"He won't. Morton lugged an oil stove out there yesterday. We can get some blankets at the livery." Norse felt all hot, yet he shivered. "Say." He held his breath. "What?" He gripped the edge of the table. "Do you think the place is really haunted?" Could Norse, that instant, have given way to the rare delight that overcame him, he would have flung his skates through the great plate-glass window of the store in a very riot of joy. His eyes became all alight. He drew away noiselessly. As he slipped out of the store he was observed neither by the interested clerk nor by the two stocky young men to whose conversation he had listened with such rapt attention, and who, that instant, stepped from behind the counter into the aisle. Before they reached the door he was speeding up State Street, past Tut's, past the Congregational Church, past the First Ward School, past Newberry Hall, thoughtless of the icy pavement, and, apparently, of the fact that a slip might mean the failure of the plan he outlined as he ran. III Kerwin's fraternity house stood on a prominent corner three blocks above the book-store. Norse rushed up the steps and inside without stopping to take breath. There was no one in the smoking-room; that is to say, no one but a high school pledgling, who sat in front of the fire, reading, and pledglings don't count. "Is Kerwin here?" Norse gasped, leaning heavily against the door. The youth at the fire turned, nonchalantly, and removing a cigarette from between his lips, as calmly as though panting freshmen with obviously loaded minds were but ordinary phenomena, replied: "No. Saw him going out just as I came in. Said he wouldn't be back to dinner." "Where did he go?" "No idea." The pledgling flecked the ash from his cigarette. "Well, I'm going up to his room a minute," Norse cried, turning back into the hallway. "Told you he isn't there!" the infant called after him; but Norse did not seem to hear. He knew the location of Kerwin's room from previous visits. Now he found it deserted. He perceived all the appointments with one sweep of his eyes--the signs, the tennis-net draped between the front windows and sagging with photographs, the huge Japanese umbrella dependent from the ceiling with many little favors and a multitude of dance cards dangling from the rim, the black-oak study-table, the swivel chair in front of it, the Comedy Club poster on the door, and the closet that projected rudely into the room. A hand-bag lay on the floor in a corner. Norse did not pause to reflect, as, being the leading man in a stirring melodrama, he should have done. He acted without reflection, mechanically almost; but when he started back down the stairs, which he took in three leaps, he carried the hand-bag, stuffed, now, and fat. "What you got there?" the pledgling called as the figure passed the smoking-room. Norse did not waste breath replying.