the sun, just as he is every fall," I persisted.

"Wrote you from out there, did he? Sent you picture-postals showing him herding his cattle, or whatever the beasts are? Kept in touch with you all the time, did he? I tell you his fine color is due to Switzerland, not Dakota."

"Wiggins is n't a letter-writer, nor the sort of person who wants to paper your house with picture-postals. His not writing does n't mean that he was n't on his ranch," I replied, annoyed by Jewett's manner.

"Never dropped you before, though, I wager," he chirruped. "I tell you he saw Miss Cecilia Hollister at the Asolando tea-shop: just a glimpse; but almost immediately he went abroad in pursuit of her. The chevalier—that's her aunt Octavia—was along and another niece. My sister saw the bunch of them in Geneva, where the chevalier was breaking records. A whole troop of suitors followed them everywhere. My sister knows the girl—Cecilia—and she's known Wiggy all her life. She's just home and told me about it last night. She thinks the chevalier has some absurd scheme for marrying off the girl. It's all very queer, our Wiggy being mixed up in it."

"Don't be absurd, Jewett. There's nothing unusual in a man being in love; that's one fashion that does n't change much. I venture to say that Wiggins will prove a formidable suitor. Wiggins is a gentleman, and the girl would be lucky to get him."

"Quite right, my dear Ames; but alas! there are others. The competition is encouraged by the aunt, the veteran chevalier. My sister says the chevalier seems to favor the suit of a Nebraska philosopher who rejoices in the melodious name of Dick."

Jewett was playing me for all his story was worth, and enjoying himself immensely.

"For Heaven's sake, go on!"

"Nice girl, this Cecilia. You know the Hollisters,—oodles of money in the family. The chevalier's father scored big in baby-buggies—responsible for the modern sleep-inducing perambulators; sold out to a trust. The father of Wiggins's inamorata had started in to be a marine painter. A founder of this club, come to think of it, but dropped out long ago. You have heard of him—Bassford Hollister. Funny thing his having to give up art. Great gifts for the marine, but never could overcome tendency to seasickness. Honest! Every time he painted a wave it upset him horribly. The doctors could n't help him. Next tried his hand at the big gulches down-town. There was a chance there to hit off the metropolitan sky-line and become immortal by doing it first; but a new trouble developed. Doing the high buildings made him dizzy! Honest! He was good, too, and would have made a place, but he had to cut it out. He was so torn up over his two failures that he blew in his share of the perambulator money in riotous living. Lost his wife into the bargain, and has settled down to a peaceful life up in Westchester County in one of these cute little bungalows the real-estate operators build for you if you pay a dollar down for a picture of an acre lot."

"And the daughter?"

"Well, Bassford Hollister has two daughters. It's the older one that has stolen Wiggins's heart away. She's Cecilia, you know. Very literary and that sort of thing, and pushed tea and cookies at the Asolando when that idiocy was opened. Wiggins saw her there last spring. Miss Hollister, the aunt,—whom I 'm fond of calling the chevalier,—picked up her nieces about that time and hauled them off to Europe, and Wiggins scampered after them. I don't know what they did to Wiggy, but you see how he acts. I rather imagine that the chevalier did n't smile on his suit. She's a holy terror, that woman, with an international reputation for doing weird and most unaccountable things. She draws a sort of royalty on all the baby-buggies in creation; it amounts to a birth-tax, in contravention of the free guarantees of the Constitution. The people will rise against it some day.

"She's plausible enough, but she's the past mistress of ulterior motive. She got Fortner, the mural painter, up to a place she used to have at Newport a few years ago, ostensibly to do a frieze or something, and she made him teach her to fire a gun. You know Fortner, with his artistic ideals! And he did n't know any more about guns than a flea. It was droll, decidedly droll. But she kept him there a month,—wouldn't let him off the reservation; but she paid him his fee just the same, though he never painted a stroke. When he got back to town, he was a wreck. It was just like being in jail. I warn you to let her alone. If you should undertake to fix her flues she's likely to put you to work digging potatoes. She's no end of a case."

"Well, Wiggins is a good fellow, one of the very best," I remarked, as I absorbed these revelations, "and it is n't the girl's aunt he wants to marry."

"He's a capital fellow," affirmed Jewett, "and that's why it's a sin this had to happen to him. There's no telling where this affair may lead him. There's something queer in the wind, all right. The chevalier has brother Bassford where he can't whimper; I rather fancy he feeds from her hand. His girls have n't any prospects except through the chevalier. Nice girls, so I'm told; but between the father with his vertiginous tendencies and a lunatic aunt who holds the family money-bags, I don't see much ahead of them. Miss Cecilia Hollister is living with her aunt; it's a sort of compulsory sequestration; she has to do it whether she wants to or not. I rather fancy it's to keep her away from Wiggins."

"And the other sister; where does she come in?"

"Not important, I fancy. Rumor is silent touching her. In fact I 've never heard anything of her. But this Cecilia is no end handsome and proud. Poor old Wiggy!"

I was already ashamed of myself for having encouraged Jewett to discuss Wiggins's affairs, and was about to leave him, when he snorted, in a disagreeable way he had, at some joke that had occurred to him, and he continued chuckling to himself to attract my attention. My frown did not dismay him.

He continued chuckling to himself to attract my attention.

"I knew there was something," he was saying, "about Miss Cecilia's younger sister, and I've just recalled it. The girl has a most extraordinary name, quite the most remarkable you ever heard."

He laughed until he was purple in the face. I did not imagine that any name known to feminine nomenclature could be so humorous.

"Hezekiah! Bang! That's the little sister's name. Bassford Hollister had been saving that name for a son, who never appeared, to do honor to old Hezekiah, the perambulator-chap. So they named the girl for her grand-dad. Bang! One of the apostles, Hezekiah!"

I waited for his mirth to wear itself out, and then rose, to terminate the interview with an adequate dramatic dismissal.

"You poor pagan," I remarked, with such irony as I could command; "it's too bad you insist on revealing the abysmal depths of your ignorance: Hezekiah was not an apostle, but a mighty king before the day of apostles."

I left him blinking, and unconvinced as to Hezekiah's proper place in history.

Wiggins, I learned at the office, had, within half an hour, left the club hurriedly in a cab, taking a trunk with him. He had mentioned no mail-address to the clerk.

And this was very unlike Wiggins.

CHAPTER II

THE BEGINNING OF MY ADVENTURE

Wiggins's strange conduct and Jewett's dark hints so disturbed me that the very next afternoon I again sought the Asolando Tea-Room, feeling that in its atmosphere I might best weigh the few facts I possessed touching my friend's love-affairs.

Those who care for details in these