"Pep," I said, lowering my voice, "if you love me, keep close to Cecilia all day. You're an engaged man and in practice. Give an imitation of devotion. Keep her out of doors; keep male human beings away from her. Don't fail me in this. I 've got to pull off the greatest coup of my life to-day. There's a band of outlaws hanging round here who will propose to Cecilia the first chance they get--and they must NOT. Wig 's got to speak before night or lose out forever. No; not a word of explanation; you've got to take my word for it." "I'll be the goat; go ahead, but build a fire under Wiggins; I can't stay here forever." Pepperton's engagement smoothed out one wrinkle, and I felt sure that I could trust him as an ally. The groom was holding my horse in the porte-cochère, and I mounted and rode away to the Prescott Arms. I found Ormsby, Shallenberger, Arbuthnot, Henderson, Hume, and Gorse glumly sitting in a semicircle before the hall fireplace. Deepest gloom pervaded the inn. I have rarely seen melancholy so darkly stamped upon the human countenance. They turned indifferently and glared as they recognized me. Shallenberger alone rose and greeted me. "I hope there is no bad news," he said chokingly. "Bad news?" "I mean Miss Hollister--Miss Cecilia. We were all deeply grieved last night to hear of her sudden illness; there's always something so terrible in the very name of diphtheria." My wits had been so sharpened by my late adventures that I readily accounted for these false tidings. Dick was absent; Dick alone would have been equal to this diabolical plot for keeping his rival suitors away from Hopefield. The despair in those faces taxed my gravity severely. "It is extremely sad, but the first diagnosis was erroneous," I answered. "I think it more likely to prove to be chicken-pox when the truth is known." "Not diphtheria?" "No immediate danger of diphtheria, I assure you," I replied; "though of course, with winter coming on and all that, one must be prepared for the worst." While he repeated this to the others, I sought the clerk, who promptly handed me a note which Wiggins had left late the previous afternoon, to be delivered in case I called. He had gone to spend a day or two with Orton, the playwright, who was at his country house, in the hills beyond Mt. Kisco, rehearsing a new piece, in which a friend of Hartley's was to star. I gained the telephone-booth in one jump, and in five minutes I was bawling wildly into Orton's ear. I had known him well in the Hare and Tortoise, and he answered my demand for Wiggins with the heart-breaking news that Hartley had ridden off with some other guests in the house--Orton did n't know where. "I threw them out; I've got to rewrite my third act; I don't care whether they ever come back," boomed Orton's voice. "If you don't send Wiggins back to me at Hopefield as fast as he can get there, my third act is ruined." "What?"