Criss crossed about the platform and between the trees swayed the vivid color splashes of the lanterns, like magnified and luminous confetti. Sifting and eddying on the swaying floor went the rhythmic whirlpool of dancers. The soft colors of evening gowns, the ivory flashes of girlish shoulders and the floating of filmy scarfs dizzied the boy, who by the iron dictate of heredity and upbringing was a human rattle-snake. The strange sight of men in evening dress, their shirt-fronts gleaming like conspicuous targets, added to his bewilderment. Between the trees passed strolling couples whose laughter lilted musically, and, as he crept nearer in the shadow of the lilac bushes, he saw a queer little affair which was also new to him, only a few yards away. It was a rustic summer-house, over the timbers of which trailed masses of honey-suckle, and into it, as he lay there peering sharply ahead, went a man and a girl. The man was dutifully wielding a fan after the flush of the dance and talking earnestly in a low tone, and the girl was laughing up into his face with a silvery softness so unlike the nasal voices of his own kind that Newt could make nothing of it. Nowhere was the hint of hardship: the hardship which was in his country life's dominant note. Back at the rear in the moonlight, the whitewashed barns and fences gleamed like structures of ivory. He lay there on his stomach, his elbows on the ground and his chin in his hands, trying to search the faces of the dancers. But the dancers shifted and sifted in so bewildering a maze that even had they been nearer at hand he could hardly have identified familiar features. Then the music stopped, and he drew a breath of relief, for the platform partly emptied itself, and, as the couples came down and strolled under the lanterns, it was easier to search for the face he wanted to see. Newt Spooner had been there perhaps an hour while waltz and two-step alternated to set the human mass he was trying to sift into fresh and maddening puzzles of rapid movement and vagueness. At the distance he had decided it was hopeless, and though the summer-house under the honey-suckle seemed a favorite retreat to which couple after couple came for a moment of rest and innocent flirtation, it had not proved a Mecca for his victim, if indeed his victim were there at all. Of this possibility he now felt a diminishing credulity. He would, nevertheless, try to slip closer for a final scrutiny and then go back to town, admitting temporary defeat. Then, as with snake-like movements he was hitching himself forward, he suddenly stopped and crouched closer to the ground and held his intaken breath in his throbbing throat.