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He arrived on the stage that reaches Fairshore at half-past one, and as he had come directly from his lecture room, he had first to have lunch and change to his out-of-door clothes. This made it the middle of the afternoon before he reached the cottage. As soon as he had a glimpse of it, he experienced a sinking of the heart that warned him that I was not there. However, he went through the formality of knocking at the front door before going round to see if I had left the key, as I did for short absences, or had taken it to the Inn as when I meant to be away several days. He found the key in the accustomed place, and something more alarming. Inside the screened porch at the back were the three little bottles of milk which the milkman had left there each evening that I had been away. So I had been gone three days!

The first thing was to make sure that I was not at Mira Monte or at Idlewild, where I went sometimes as the mood demanded. He was very cautious about making inquiries at the post-office and the Inn, for, of course, I hadn’t given Herman any right to be interested in my whereabouts. And, of course, if I really had gone off to hunt for hypothetical people in the woods, I shouldn’t want it talked about. At the end of an hour he had learned nothing more definite than that if I had gone out of town it had not been by the regular stages, and nobody knew when or where.