"I dislike women as a sex," he said, "but I've always been gentle and easy with isolated examples of 'em. It ain't my style to turn 'em down. But this is asking too much. I'm sorry. But I got to be true to my oath--I got to be a hermit." "Maybe," sneered Mr. Max, "he's got good reason for being a hermit. Maybe there's brass buttons and blue uniforms mixed up in it." "You come from the great world of suspicion," answered the hermit, turning reproving eyes upon him. "Your talk is natural--it goes with the life you lead. But it isn't true." "And Mr. Max is the last who should insinuate," rebuked Mr. Magee. "Why, only last night he denounced suspicion, and bemoaned the fact that there is so much of it in the world." "Well he might," replied the hermit. "Suspicion is the key-note of modern life--especially in New York." He drew the purple dressing-gown closer about his plump form. "I remember the last time I was in the big town, seeing a crowd of men in the grill-room of the Hoffman House. One of them--long, lean, like an eel--stooped down and whispered in the ear of a little fellow with a diamond horseshoe desecrating his haberdashery, and pointing to another man near by. 'No, I won't,' says the man with the diamonds, 'I don't introduce nobody to nobody. Let every man play his own game, I say.' That's New York. That's the essence of the town. 'I introduce nobody to nobody.'" "It seems odd," remarked Mr. Magee, "to hear you speak of the time you walked on pavements." "I haven't always been on Baldpate Mountain," replied the hermit. "Once I, too, paid taxes and wore a derby hat and sat in barbers' chairs. Yes, I sat in 'em in many towns, in many corners of this little round globe. But that's all over now." The three visitors gazed at Mr. Peters with a new interest. "New York," said Mr. Max softly, as a better man might have spoken the name of the girl he loved. "Its a great little Christmas tree. The candles are always burning and the tinsel presents always look good to me." The hermit's eyes strayed far away--down the mountain--and beyond. "New York," said he, and his tone was that in which Max had said the words. "A great little Christmas tree it is, with fine presents for the reaching. Sometimes, at night here, I see it as it was four years ago--I see the candles lit on the Great White Way--I hear the elevated roar, and the newsboys shout, and Diamond Jim Brady applauding at a musical comedy's first night. New York!" Mr. Max rose pompously and pointed a yellow finger at the Hermit of Baldpate Mountain. "I got you!" he cried in triumph. "I'm wise! You want to go back." A half-hearted smile crossed the visible portion of the hermit's face.