"I believe he is going home this evening," she said; "he wants to show his folks a new suit of clothes that has been given him. I guess he's trying them on." "I am a neighbor of his," said Perce. "I am camping on the beach with some friends; and we want him to join us." "Well!" exclaimed the landlady, "you can go right up to his room and find him. It's in the old part of the house; but you'd better go up the front way; it's lighter." She was explaining to Perce that he must go up one flight, proceed to the end of the corridor, and then step down into a lower passage--when the tall young brunette called over the banisters, "I'll show him!" He mounted after her; and she threw open the door of what seemed an unoccupied room, to let more light from its windows into the corridor. "Be careful not to stumble!" she warned him. "That's his room, right before you, as you go down those steps." So saying, she disappeared in some other room, and Perce was left alone in the dim hall. He paused a moment to get a glimpse of the sea through the door and window of the room she had opened, which happened to be Mr. Hatville's room; then he groped his way to Olly's door and knocked. In a little while, he returned alone to his friends on the beach. "I couldn't find him," he said. "Mrs. Murcher sent me up to his room, but he wasn't there; and I went all over the place. Then she said she thought he must have gone home, to show his folks a new suit of clothes; he had asked her if he might; but she didn't expect him to go so soon." "Olly's made, if he's got some new clothes!" said Moke. "He never would speak to us, after that!" said Poke. "Never mind; we can 'wake Nicodemus' without him." "Wake Nicodemus!" Moke shouted gleefully, to hear his voice resound in the woods. "Wake Nicodemus!" Poke repeated. And the three joined gayly in the chorus of a song then popular: "Now, run and tell Elijah to hurry up Pomp, And meet us at the gum-tree down in the swamp, To wake Nicodemus to-day!" The very human biped whose cries had been mistaken for a loon's, heard their voices wafted to him by the wind--the same wind that was blowing him farther and farther from the shore. He screamed again, wildly; but his own voice sounded weaker and weaker, while the merry chorus still went up from the little camping party on the beach: "Wake Nicodemus to-day!" The boys sang and chatted as they worked. They made their beds in a hollow of the windswept dunes, where there would be less annoyance from mosquitoes than in the shelter of the woods, and spread their hay and blankets upon the dry sand. "Besides," said Perce, "the daylight will strike us here, and wake us early." "Wake Nicodemus!" laughed Poke. And then they all burst forth again: "Wake Nicodemus to-day!"