No matter who cut them, they were still there to prove that Quill's Window was accessible. According to tradition, no one had put foot inside the cave since David Windom, in his youth, had ventured to explore its grisly interior. Courtney promised himself that one day he would enter that unhallowed hole in the wall! Retracing his steps over the trail, he soon found himself in the village. He was more cheerful now. He had talked himself into a better frame of mind....She was shy. She had reached the turning point,--the inevitable point where women tremble with a strange mixture of alarm and rapture, and are as timid as the questioning deer. What a fool he was not to have thought of that! There was a small package in his lockbox at the postoffice--and two or three letters. The package was from New York, addressed in his mother's hand. He stopped at the general delivery window for a chat with Mrs. Pollock. "I had forgotten all about my birthday," he said, "but here's mother reminding me of it as usual. She never forgets,--and, hang it all, she won't let ME forget." He fingered the unopened package lovingly. "Goodness me, Mr. Thane,--is this your birthday?" she cried excitedly. "We must have a celebration. We can't allow--" "Alas, it is too late. Your super-efficient postal service has brought this to me just forty-eight hours behind time. Day before yesterday was the day, now that I think of it." Mrs. Pollock mentally resolved to indite a short poem to him, notwithstanding. She could feel it coming, even as she stood there talking to him. The first line was already written, so to speak. It went: "The flight of Time has brought once more--" He continued, oblivious to the workings of the Muse: "Twenty-nine! By Jove, I begin to feel that I'm getting on in life." He ripped open one of the envelopes. Maude Baggs Pollock looked intently at the ceiling of the outer office, and thought of line number two: "The busy Reaper to his door," She hastily snatched a pencil from her hair and began jotting down these precious lines. Fumbling for a bit of paper her fingers encountered an envelope addressed to Alaska Spigg. The Muse worked swiftly. Before she had dashed off the first two lines, the second pair were crowding down upon them, to wit: "But while he whets his fatal scythe, Gaze ye upon his victim lithe." At this juncture George Rice's son came in for a half dozen postal cards, and while she was making change for a dime the Muse forsook her. Bent on preserving the lines already shaped, she stuffed Alaska's letter into the pocket of her apron, intending to copy them at the first leisure moment. Unfortunately for Alaska, there was a rush of business at the window, including an acrimonious dispute with Mrs. Ryan over the non-arrival of a letter she was expecting from her son, and a lengthy conversation with Miss Flora Grady who dropped in to say that her chilblains always began to bother her in October. In the meantime, Courtney departed.