He was taking the long way home, enjoyed driving the island by himself at night. In the bright moon, the High Ridge woodland was as beautiful now as he remembered from boyhood. He could recall the very trees where he and his friends had played. Approaching the Tinton house, he admired again the juniper red cedars planted by old Cannons in generations past. The trees in their height, girth, and dark foliage always seemed formal to him—trees wearing black tie and tuxedo. He wondered at the same time why the lights were still on at the Tintons. He’d have thought both Blanche and Harvey were fast asleep by now.

Scott drove with a proprietary sense along the stands of pitch pine and pin oak, the clumps of birches, and the elms like sentries guarding a king’s preserve. He went slowly, aware of the gravel pelting up on the bottom of the car. He shouldn’t have taken the big car, he thought, but he had forgotten about the tarring of the road up here. Had a couple of drinks too many himself, he chuckled.

Sometimes, like tonight, he felt as if he owned all of what he saw. In a way he did, because he loved it all and he could enjoy it all. And the Harvard fellow would help them get rid of the Yarkie contamination that had sprung up out of nowhere.

Scott turned his attention to the wide bay-leaved willow tree he was driving by. Its trunk was as weather-­beaten as the Yarkie houses, and the broad circle of its branches made a crown of delicate leaves that hung in the night like the golden hair of the princesses he had loved in his childhood fairy tales—books he had hidden in these very woods to devour.

But when the man stopped his car with a grunt of surprise, it wasn’t to admire the willow tree or any other. It was because he was flabbergasted to see Hilda Cannon’s station wagon sitting in the Tinton driveway.

Damned funny! Hildie hadn’t come to his party because she was so worried about her girls. His mind flashed: Had she found them at the Tintons? What would they be doing there?

Stephen Scott pulled his car up behind the station wagon and heaved his weight from behind the wheel. Riffraff were coming over to Yarkie, like those three bums yesterday. Couldn’t tell what they might be up to.

The situation required caution, clearly.

Scott tiptoed distrustfully to the house. The door opened to his hand. No disorder, good. But also no people, downstairs or, puffingly he found, upstairs. If Hildie was visiting Harvey and Blanche, where the hell were they? Taking a walk in the woods? They didn’t know the warning to stay out was phony. Maybe Hildie was helping Blanche help Harvey walk off the rum he had guzzled.