and shields, hunting horns, sundry pairs of large boots,
military or shooting garments, belts loaded with cartridges. It
seemed almost like the combative entry to some museum of armor.
Taken together with the embattled dog, it suggested a defended
fortress rather than a peaceful fireside.

"How pugnacious!" Gard declared to himself.

In the entry Ernst was called, and he came promptly forth, a smiling
lad of fifteen, with a musing face, his thick light hair thrown back
and run through meditatively by his fingers. He conducted Gard up
two flights to a good-sized but snug room where he was to abide. A
linden tree courted the window panes with its green branches.

Just the place for a fellow who wants to get away from the world and
read!--Kirtley thought.

On his nightstand lay, with characteristic Teuton foresight, the
names and addresses of a language teacher and of a music teacher
who were duly "recommending themselves" to him in the German idiom.
Lists of purchasable text books and musical editions from houses
which, in the thoroughly informed Teuton manner, had got wind of
his coming, also opened before him.

"They evidently expect me to begin to-morrow morning. No loss of
time." He laughed to himself.

His trunk and satchel were in his room in a few minutes with all the
certainty and punctuality of the imperial-royal service. "_Essen
fertig!_" was soon vociferated up the stairway by the cook Tekla,
whose bulky young form Gard had glimpsed in the kitchen. Not sure of
being summoned he did not emerge until Ernst tapped on the door--

"Meester Kirtley, please come to eating."

At table the elder son was introduced--Rudolph, called Rudi, a youth
of about Gard's age. There was an unseemly scar on his face and
something oblique in his look. Engineering was given as his
profession, but he affected the German military strut and was
forward and crammed with ready-made conclusions on most subjects.
But Herr Bucher reigned here as elsewhere about Villa Elsa as
absolute master. He alone spoke with authority. Reverence was
first of all due him. Gard soon saw how the wife and children,
notwithstanding their stirring presences, were on a secondary plane.
How different in the land where he had come from where they are
quite free to rule in the house! The sturdy Frau was submissive,
energetically helpful. But in her husband's absence she assumed his
stentorian command.

The manner of eating was frankly informal and ungai