Every one seemed to have gone away with the wolf. George Henry began trying to determine what it was that was wrong. The letter-carrier, a fine fellow, who had called upon him daily in the past, now never crossed his threshold. Even book agents and peddlers avoided the place, from long experience of rebuff. The bill-collectors came no more, of course; and as George Henry looked back over the past months of humiliation and agony he suddenly realized that to these same collectors he had been solely indebted toward the last of his time of trial for what human companionship had come to him. His friends, how easily they had given him up! He thought of poor old Rip Van Winkle's plaint, "How soon we are forgotten when we are gone!" and sarcastically amended it to "How soon we are forgotten when we are here!" A few invitations declined, the ordinary social calls left for some other time, and he was apparently forgotten. He could not much blame himself that he had voluntarily severed the ties. A man cannot dine in comfort with comfortable friends when his heart is sore over his general inconsequence in the real world. Play is not play when zest is not given to it by work and duties. Even his social evenings with old and true friends he had given up early in the struggle. He could not overcome the bitterness of his lot sufficiently to sit easily among those he most cared for. It is not difficult sometimes to drop out of life while yet alive. Yet George Henry realized that possibly he had been an extended error--had been too sensitive. He thought of his neglect of friends and his generally stupid performances while under the spell of the wolf, but he thought also of the excuse he had, and conscience was half appeased. So he was alone, the same old Selkirk or Robinson Crusoe, without a man Friday, without even a parrot and goats; alone in his once familiar hotel and his office, in a city where he was distinctly of the native sort, where he had seen, it seemed to him, every one of the great "sky-scraping" buildings rise from foundation-stone to turret, where he should be one whose passage along the street would be a series of greetings. He yearned for companionship. His pulse quickened when he met one of his lately persecuting bill-collectors on the street and received from him a friendly recognition of his bow and smile. He became affable with elevator-men and policemen. But he was lonely, very lonely. The days drifted into long weeks, when one day the mail-carrier, once so regular in his calls, now almost a stranger, appeared and cast upon George Henry's desk a letter returned uncalled for. The recipient examined it with interest. It did not require much to excite his interest now.