Danger | Page 5

the kisses of his mother sweet on his pure lips, had
left her for an evening's social enjoyment at the house of one of her

closest and dearest friends, and she never looked upon his face again.
He had entered the house of that friend with a clear head and steady
nerves, and he had gone out at midnight bewildered with the wine that
had been poured without stint to her hundred guests, young and old.
How it had fared with him the reader knows too well.
CHAPTER III.

"HEAVENS and earth! Why doesn't some one go to the door?"
exclaimed Mr. Spencer Birtwell, rousing himself from a heavy sleep as
the bell was rung for the third time, and now with four or five vigorous
and rapid jerks, each of which caused the handle of the bell to strike
with the noise of a hammer.
The gray dawn was just breaking.
"There it is again! Good heavens! What does it mean?" and Mr.
Birtwell, now fairly awake, started up in bed and sat listening. Scarcely
a moment intervened before the bell was pulled again, and this time
continuously for a dozen times. Springing from the bed, Mr. Birtwell
threw open a window, and looking out, saw two policemen at the door.
"What's wanted?" he called down to them.
"Was there a young man here last night named Voss?" inquired one of
the men.
"What about him?" asked Mr. Birtwell.
"He hasn't been home, and his friends are alarmed. Do you know where
he is?"
"Wait, returned Mr. Birtwell; and shutting down the window, he
dressed himself hurriedly.
"What is it?" asked his wife, who had been awakened from a heavy
slumber by the noise at the window.

"Archie Voss didn't get home last night."
"What?" and Mrs. Birtwell started out of bed.
"There are two policemen at the door."
"Policemen!"
"Yes; making a grand row for nothing, as if young men never stayed
away from home. I must go down and see them. Go back into bed again,
Margaret. You'll take your death o' cold. There's nothing to be alarmed
about. He'll come up all right."
But Mrs. Birtwell did not return to her bed. With warm wrapper thrown
about her person, she stood at the head of the stairway while her
husband went down to admit the policemen. All that could be learned
from them was that Archie Voss had not come home from the party,
and that his friends were greatly alarmed about him. Mr. Birtwell had
no information to give. The young man had been at his house, and had
gone away some time during the night, but precisely at what hour he
could not tell.
"You noticed him through the evening?" said one of the policemen.
"Oh yes, certainly. We know Archie very well. He's always been
intimate at our house."
"Did he take wine freely?"
An indignant denial leaped to Mr. Birtwell's tongue, but the words died
unspoken, for the image of Archie, with flushed face and eyes too
bright for sober health, holding in his hand a glass of sparkling
champagne, came vividly before him.
"Not more freely than other young men," he replied. "Why do you
ask?"
"There are two theories of his absence," said the policeman. "One is
that he has been set upon in the street, robbed and murdered, and the

other that, stupefied and bewildered by drink, he lost himself in the
storm, and lies somewhere frozen to death and hidden under the snow."
A cry of pain broke from the lips of Mrs. Birtwell, and she came
hurrying down stairs. Too well did she remember the condition of
Archie when she last saw him--Archie, the only son of her oldest and
dearest friend, the friend she had known and loved since girlhood. He
was not fit to go out alone in that cold and stormy night; and a guilty
sense of responsibility smote upon her heart and set aside all excuses.
"What about his mother?" she asked, anxiously. "How is she bearing
this dreadful suspense?"
"I can't just say, ma'am," was answered, "but I think they've had the
doctor with her all night--that is, all the last part of the night. She's
lying in a faint, I believe."
"Oh, it will kill her! Poor Frances! Poor Frances!" wailed out Mrs.
Birtwell, wringing her hands and beginning to cry bitterly.
"The police have been on the lookout for the last two or three hours,
but can't find any trace of him," said the officer.
"Oh, he'll turn up all right," broke in Mr. Birtwell, with a confident tone.
"It's only a scare. Gone home with some young friend, as like as not.
Young fellows in their teens don't get lost in the snow, particularly in
the streets of a great city,