When, shortly after dawn, I had finished the account, I looked at Cabot, who, all the time, had been sitting at the window, his chin on his hands, watching the snow, lost in what thoughts I could scarcely conjecture. He turned and faced me.

"It" s true," he said, "but you need not believe it."

I didn" t know what to say. It could not, of course, be true, yet I felt Cabot to be one of the most honest men I had ever known.

Then I noticed his ring, almost for the first time, though I had seen it a thousand times. It had been mentioned in the account, that simple ring of red metal, bearing the crest of Cabot.

"Yes," said Cabot, extending his hand, "this is the ring."

I gestured to the manuscript. "Why have you shown me this?" I asked. "I want someone to know of these things," said Cabot simply.

I arose, now conscious for the first time of a lost night of sleep, the effects of the drinking, and of the several cups of bitter coffee. I smiled wryly. "I think," I said, "I" d better go."

"Of course," said Cabot, helping me on with my coat. At the doorway he held out his hand. "Good-bye," he said.

"I" ll see you tomorrow," I said.

"No," he said. "I am going again to the mountains."

It was in February, at this time, that he had disappeared seven years before.

I was shocked into clear consciousness. "Don" t go," I said.

"I am going," he said.

"Let me come with you," I said.

"No," he said, "I may not come back."

We shook hands, and I had the strange feeling that I might never see Tarl Cabot again. My hand was clenched firmly on his, and his on mine. I had meant something to him, and he to me, and now as simply as this it seemed that friends might part forever, never to see or talk to one another again. I found myself in the bleak white hallway outside his apartment, blinking at the exposed bulb in the ceiling. I walked for some hours, in spite of my fatigue, thinking, puzzling about these strange things of which I had heard.