he would have been quite exhausted long before he reached envelope No. 17,
which was the last but three of the packet. This read:--

"Reach home at 6:20 P.M. Before entering house, read No. 18."

Leaning against one of the big white stone pillars of the porch of his
home, Cyrus wearily tore open envelope No. 18, and the words fairly swam
before his eyes. He had to rub them hard to make sure that he was not
mistaken:--

"Go again to Kingston Heights, corner West and Dwight Streets, reaching
there by 6:50. Read No. 19."

The boy looked up at the windows, desperately angry at last. If his pride
and his sense of the meaning of that phrase, "My word of honor," as the men
of the Woodbridge family were in the habit of teaching their sons, had not
both been of the strongest sort, he would have rebelled, and gone defiantly
and stormily in. As it was, he stood for one long minute with his hands
clenched and his teeth set; then he turned and walked down the steps away
from the longed-for dinner, and out toward L Street and the car for
Kingston Heights.


As he did so, inside the house, on the other side of the curtains, from
behind which he had been anxiously peering, Cornelius Woodbridge, Senior,
turned about and struck his hands together, rubbing them in a satisfied
way.

"He's come--and gone," he cried, softly, "and he's on time to the minute!"