She stepped down from the front seat, and the owner with sudden alacrity vaulted the door and started after her.

“You coming?” he inquired of Ernest Peabody.  But Ernest Peabody being soundly asleep made no reply.  Winthrop turned to Sam.  “Are you coming?” he repeated.

The tone of the invitation seemed to suggest that a refusal would not necessarily lead to a quarrel.

“I am not!” said the brother.  “You’ve kept Peabody and me twelve hours in the open air, and it’s past two, and we’re going to sleep.  You can take it from me that we are going to spend the rest of this night here in this road.”

He moved his cramped joints cautiously, and stretched his legs the full width of the car.

“If you can’t get plain water,” he called, “get club soda.”

He buried his nose in the collar of his fur coat, and the odors of camphor and raccoon skins instantly assailed him, but he only yawned luxuriously and disappeared into the coat as a turtle draws into its shell.  From the woods about him the smell of the pine needles pressed upon him like a drug, and before the footsteps of his companions were lost in the silence he was asleep.  But his sleep was only a review of his waking hours.  Still on either hand rose flying dust clouds and twirling leaves; still on either side raced gray stone walls, telegraph poles, hills rich in autumn colors; and before him a long white road, unending, interminable, stretching out finally into a darkness lit by flashing shop-windows, like open fireplaces, by street lamps, by swinging electric globes, by the blinding searchlights of hundreds of darting trolley cars with terrifying gongs, and then a cold white mist, and again on every side, darkness, except where the four great lamps blazed a path through stretches of ghostly woods.

As the two young men slumbered, the lamps spluttered and sizzled like bacon in a frying-pan, a stone rolled noisily down the bank, a white owl, both appalled and fascinated by the dazzling eyes of the monster blocking the road, hooted, and flapped itself away.  But the men in the car only shivered slightly, deep in the sleep of utter weariness.

In silence the girl and Winthrop followed the chauffeur.  They had passed out of the light of the lamps, and in the autumn mist the electric torch of the owner was as ineffective as a glow-worm.  The mystery of the forest fell heavily upon them.  From their feet the dead leaves sent up a clean, damp odor, and on either side and overhead the giant pine trees whispered and rustled in the night wind.

“Take my coat, too,” said the young man.  “You’ll catch cold.”  He spoke with authority and began to slip the loops from the big horn buttons.  It was not the habit of the girl to consider her health.  Nor did she permit the members of her family to show solicitude concerning it.  But the anxiety of the young man, did not seem to offend her.  She thanked him generously.  “No; these coats are hard to walk in, and I want to walk,” she exclaimed.