One of the fellows at the table invited us to dine at his house in town last Sunday evening. Berrisford was to meet me at a hotel in the Back Bay at a quarter past seven and we were to go together. I took a long walk that afternoon, and the air was so delicious and the autumn foliage in the country so beautiful that I didn’t realize how late it was until I looked at a clock in a jeweller’s window on the way back. I hurried to my room to dress, and as I opened the front door my heart suddenly sank—for upstairs I heard Saga chanting his terrible little refrain. We have all come to dread that sound at our house, for it invariably means the loss of a cherished object to somebody. Berrisford calls it the "Icelandic Hunger and Death Motif." I ran upstairs and found Saga eating one of the tails of my dress-coat which I had hung over the back of a chair in my study to get the creases out. He had apparently first torn it off, then divided it into small pieces, and was consuming them one by one as I came in. I was already late for dinner, and as it was Sunday evening there was no one in town from whom I could borrow another coat. For a moment I could n’t decide whether to sit down and cry or to commit Sagacide. *IV* Of course I went to the dinner—and what is more, I arrived almost on time. I can’t give myself any particular credit for this achievement, however, as it was luck, pure and simple, that got me there. There is no doubt about it, I am marvellously lucky; I seem to have a knack of falling on my feet, and although Duggie has taken to worrying about my "shiftlessness" (as he is pleased to call it) in money matters, and the calmness with which I regard the approaching examinations and the academic side of college in general, I have a feeling that everything will come out all right somehow. It would sound heartless, I suppose, to speak as if I thought it fortunate that Jerry Brooks had been stricken with appendicitis just in time to get me into the dinner, if it were n’t for the fact that he is recovering so splendidly. (I went up to the hospital this afternoon to inquire.) But under the circumstances it is hard not to look upon his sudden seizure rather cheerfully—as I know he will enjoy hearing about it when he is well enough to see people. I was in despair that evening when his roommate came clattering up our tin steps and pounded on Berrisford’s door; but the instant I ran into the hall and saw him my heart gave a great throb of hope. He had his dress clothes on; but he didn’t look in the least like a person on the way to dine in town—and I felt with indescribable relief that, if this were the case, I could have his coat.