Royce is dead,--dead forever!” He had merely ventured to partially skirt the lawn, bending his steps toward the shelter of a small two-storied building at the nearest corner of it, and somewhat down the road. The lower portion of this structure, he perceived, was used as a store, containing a few dry goods, but dispensing chiefly needles and pins, especially hairpins, and such other commodities of toilet as the guests might have forgotten or exhausted or could be induced to buy. He paused in the doorway: even the sight of the limited stock ranged decorously on the shelves, the orderly counters, the smooth countenance of the salesman, seemed pleasing to him, as reminiscent of the privileges of civilization. “Can we do anything for you, sir?” asked the clerk suavely. Royce caught himself with a start. Then speaking with his teeth half closed to disguise his voice, and drawling like a mountaineer, he said, shaking his head, “Jes’ viewin’ the folks some.” He had a sense that the imitation was ill done, and glanced furtively at the face of the man behind the counter. But the clerk was devoid of speculation save as this faculty might explore his customers’ pockets. Royce noted, however, a second warning, and since the sun was down and the lawn now depopulated, save for here and there a hastening figure making for the deserted verandas, he ventured out in his shabby gear upon the plank walk that stretched along the bluff where no crags intervened, but the descent was sheer to a green and woodsy slope below. The early tea was in progress; the band that for some time had been heralding its service, playing within the quadrangle, was silent now, and the shadows were abroad in the mountains; mists were rising from dank ravines on the opposite range. A star was in the flushed sky. A whippoorwill’s plaintive tones came once and again from the umbrageous tangles that overshadowed the spring. Yellow lamps were flaring out into the purple dusk from the great looming unsubstantial building. He marked the springing into sudden brilliancy of a row of windows on the ground floor, that revealed a long, bare, empty apartment which he identified as the ballroom. There would be dancing later on. A cheerful clicking as of ivory against ivory caused him to pause abruptly and peer down the slope below, where a yellow radiance was aglow amongst the trees and precipitous descents. It came from the billiard-room in the pavilion, picturesquely poised here among the rocks and chasms, and looking out into a wild gorge that gave a twilight view of the darkening valley, and the purple glooms of the mountains towering along the horizon. It was the airiest type of structure. With only its peaked roof and its supporting timbers, the floor and the flights of steps, it seemed free to the breeze, so wide and long were the windows, all broadly open. Royce, looking down into its illuminated interior, glowing like a topaz in the midst of the