It was after midnight when I awakened. I had slept uneasily, perhaps the stimulus of Jimmy's exciting news. What \yoke me up, I do not know. I started into full wakefulness, and at once became aware that Rowena was not beside me.

The room was cold, the house wholly silent. Through the drawn window blinds faint shafts of moonlight were straggling. Rowena's negligee was gone from the chair beside curbed.

I lay listening in the silence. The door to the living room was open; a log in the dying fire fell with a sound startlingly loud.

And then I heard something that set me shuddering, and took me out of bed with a bound. 4 crunching in the snow outside the cabin! Footsteps! And, it seemed, low murmurs of voices! I reached the living room. The waning fire illumined it with flickering yellow light and waving shadows. A shaft of moonlight showed me that the outer door was open; it hung askew on its hinges, the top one broken so that it dangled forward into the room! My confusion lasted no more than a moment, however.

I found myself shouting, "Rowenal Guy!" At the door I saw a trail of footprints in the snow. Not our beaten path to the lake. These ..led sidewise toward a line of naked trees. I thought that in the moonlight there were dark blobs of retreating figures off there! The frosty outer air struck at me as I stood thinly clad.

Our overcoats hung on pegs near the living room door. I recall donning a heavy coat and pulling boots over my bare feet.

My shouts brought the household. A confusion of figures and voices.

"Jack! What the devil-"

"Jack-Guy and Toh were plucking at me. Then Toh saw the broken door.

"Oh-" He darted at it. Stooped. Straightened. "Burned! The hinges burned with a heat-ray! Where is TamaP" Guy and Toh were here! But not Rowenal Not Tamal The housekeeper appeared; stood stricken with terror.