He was alone in the sitting-room with his coffee, and the place had sunk into fathomless silence. It was only half after eight! He stuck his head out of the window. Soft flakes touched and soothed his feverish head. "Damn money!" he whispered suddenly, then stood back in the room, startled, staring his blasphemy in the face. He'd go out in the snow, and get rid of himself. This was awful! Bundled in a greatcoat, collar high, trousers rolled up, he ducked out of the great marble and iron vestibule into the night. There was no wind, and the snow was falling softly, steadily. The drive was deserted, and he made his way across to the walk along the wall. By the light of the lamp, blurred by the flakes till it looked like a tall-stemmed thistle-ball, he looked at his watch. No matter where Nellie had dined, she was a the concert by now, and a great sigh of relief fluttered the flakes about his mouth. He turned north, glad of the rise in the ground to walk against. "By jinks!" he smiled grudgingly, "it's not so bad out here. We city idiots, we--NEW MEN, with all our motors and subways, we are forgetting how to prowl." The world fell of to shadow a little beyond the shore-line, a mere space of air and flakes. Ice swirled by its way to the sea, for the tide was going out. He peered; he began to hear all sorts of fine snow-muffled sounds; and suddenly, away out on the river, something was going on--boats whistling and signaling, chatting in their scientific persiflage, out in the dark and cold of the night. "Lonesome, too!" Cameron laughed, and, boyishly, he tossed a snow-ball into the space, as if he'd have something to say out there, too! "I'm soft!" he groaned, clutching his arm. And suddenly he smiled to think how one of these days he and Bill would come out here and play together. He looked about, and a sudden pride filled him. He was actually the only creature enjoying this splendid snow! He had passed one old gentleman in a fur-lined coat, with a cap upon his white hair, walking slowly, a white bulldog playing after him in the scarcely trodden snow. Cameron turned home, a new and inexplicable glow upon him, cares dropped away. He marched; he laughed aloud once with a sudden thought of Bill. "Little corker!" He let himself in, and went straight to the bedroom to change his shoes. "I must get some water-tight things to prowl in," he thought, and he whistled a line of "Tipperary." Blurred in a pleasant fatigue he sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his wet socks, when the telephone jingled, and he hurried out to answer. "Yep, this is Cameron. Oh, hello, old girl! Thought I'd just come up for a quiet home dinner, you know." A grin like the setting sun for warmth spread over his face as he listened, as he felt the tables turning under his wet feet.