“Five o’clock.”

“Then let me have a sheet of paper and a stamped envelope, if you please.  I’ll write down to Boston and have them send my trunk up.”

He met but few persons on his way back to the cottage, but many a curious gaze followed him from behind curtained windows, and, since the ripples had not yet widened, he left many excited discussions in his wake.  Back in the cottage he threw off coat and vest, lighted his pipe and set to work.  First of all, up went the parlor windows and shades.  But a dubious examination of that apartment was sufficient.  If he should ever really live here the parlor could be made habitable, but for the present its demands were too many.  He closed the windows again and abandoned the room to its musty solitude.  From the spare room upstairs he brought bed and bedding and placed it in the sitting room.  It required some ingenuity to convert the latter apartment into a bedroom, but the difficulty was at last solved by relegating the sewing machine to the parlor and moving the couch.  When the bed was made Wade went out to the kitchen and looked over the situation there.  Closet and cup-board displayed more dishes and utensils than he would have known what to do with.  He tried the pump and after a moment’s vigorous work was rewarded with a rushing stream of ice-cold water that tasted pure and fresh.  Then he looked for fuel.  The lean-to shed, built behind the kitchen, was locked, and, after a fruitless search for the key, he pried off the hasp with a screw-driver.  The shed held the accumulated rubbish of many years, but Wade didn’t examine it.  Fuel was what he wanted and he found plenty of it.  There was a pile of old shingles and several feet of maple and hickory neatly stowed against the back wall.  Near at hand was a chopping-block, the axe still leaning against it.  There was a saw-horse, too, and a saw hung above it on a nail.  But there was no wood cut in stove size, and so Wade swung the door wide open to let in light, and set to work with the saw and axe.  It felt good to get his muscles into play again and he was soon whistling merrily.  Fifteen minutes later he was building a fire in the kitchen stove.  It was too early for supper, but the iron kettle looked very lonely without any steam curling from its impertinent spout.  After he had solved the secrets of the perplexing drafts, and ascertained by the simple expedient of placing a sooty finger in it that the water was really getting warm, he washed his hands at the sink and returned to the sitting-room to don vest and coat.  He had done that and was ruminantly filling his pipe when something drew his gaze to one of the side windows.  The pipe fell to the floor and the tobacco trailed across the carpet.

For a moment, for just the tiny space of time which it took his heart to charge madly up into his throat, turn over and race back again, the open casement framed the shoulders and face of a woman.  There were greens and blues in the background, and sunlight everywhere, and a blue shadow fell athwart the sill.  The picture glared with light and color, but for that brief fragment of time Wade’s eyes, half-blinded by the dazzlement, looked into the woman’s.  His widened with wonder and dawning recognition; hers—­but the vision passed.  The frame was empty again.