The night train “out,” full of brown and disgruntled returning vacationists, drew away from Raquette Lake Station. Caleb, in the smoking room, his hat pulled over his eyes, his eternal cigar unlighted, sat with shut lids, trying to summon up the memory of Desirée’s big brave eyes as she had bidden him goodbye on the dock. Instead, he could only recall the sweatered, cloaked crowd at the Antlers pier, waiting in the lantern-light to say goodbye to the launchful of departing guests; the two or three cards that had been thrust into his hand,--and of whose purport he had not the remotest idea; the screech of the launch-whistle, and the churning out of the boat into the dark; dragging Caleb away from the happiest hours of all his life. A man he had met at the Antlers entered the smoking room and tried to talk to him. Conover’s answers were so vague and disjointed that the other soon gave over the attempt. A fellow railroad-magnate from a camp near the lake glanced in at the door and nodded affably to the rising power in the provincial railroad world. Conover did not so much as see the greeting. He was trying once more, with shut eyes, to conjure up Desirée’s face. He stopped over a train, in New York, next morning; took a cab to the store of a famous Fifth Avenue jeweler and demanded to see an assortment of engagement rings. The clerk laid on a velvet cushion half a dozen diamond solitaires averaging in size from one to two karats and variously set. Caleb waved the collection aside, after a single glance. “I want the biggest, best diamond ring you got in the place,” he demanded. A second, far more garish array was produced. Caleb chose from it a diamond of the size of his thumb-nail, looked it over critically and said: “This’ll do, I guess. Biggest you’ve got? How much?” At the astounding price named he merely smiled, and drew out his check book. “That ought to tickle her fancy,” he mused. “Ain’t a di’mond in Granite as big.” “What size, sir?” asked the clerk. “Why, _that’s_ the one I’m takin’. That size,” replied Conover, perplexed. The clerk explained. “Oh, I see,” stammered Caleb. “I--I didn’t think to ask her. I didn’t even know fingers went by sizes. But--her hand’s a lot smaller’n mine, if that’ll help you any.” The clerk looked away at some point of interest that had suddenly sprung into his vision at a remote part of the store. Caleb picked up the huge diamond and began to fit the ring on his own fingers. His little finger alone would permit the circlet to slip down as far as the first bulging knuckle-joint. “It won’t even go on my little finger,” he observed. “I guess that’ll be just ’bout the right size for her.” “If I might suggest,” offered the clerk, “why don’t you leave the ring with me until you can find out the size of the lady’s finger? Then notify us and we will have it adjusted at once and forwarded to you.”