, no doubt, fret
if he did not appear. Furthermore, he lived close by, at the junction
of the County and Lower Road. He put a sack over his head and shoulders,
persistently declining Magnus's offered umbrella and rubber coat, and
hurried away, remarking that he had no foreman on his ranch and had to
be up and about at five the next morning to put his men to work.

"Fool!" muttered Annixter when the old man had gone. "Imagine farming a
ranch the size of his without a foreman."

Harran showed Osterman and Annixter where they were to sleep, in
adjoining rooms. Magnus soon afterward retired.

Osterman found an excuse for going to bed, but Annixter and Harran
remained in the latter's room, in a haze of blue tobacco smoke, talking,
talking. But at length, at the end of all argument, Annixter got up,
remarking:

"Well, I'm going to turn in. It's nearly two o'clock."

He went to his room, closing the door, and Harran, opening his window to
clear out the tobacco smoke, looked out for a moment across the country
toward the south.

The darkness was profound, impenetrable; the rain fell with an
uninterrupted roar. Near at hand one could hear the sound of dripping
eaves and foliage and the eager, sucking sound of the drinking earth,
and abruptly while Harran stood looking out, one hand upon the upraised
sash, a great puff of the outside air invaded the room, odourous with
the reek of the soaking earth, redolent with fertility, pungent, heavy,
tepid. He closed the window again and sat for a few moments on the edge
of the bed, one shoe in his hand, thoughtful and absorbed, wondering if
his father would involve himself in this new scheme, wondering if, after
all, he wanted him to.

But suddenly he was aware of a commotion, issuing from the direction
of Annixter's room, and the voice of Annixter himself upraised in
expostulation and exasperation. The door of the room to which Annixter
had been assigned opened with a violent wrench and an angry voice
exclaimed to anybody who would listen:

"Oh, yes, funny, isn't it? In a way, it's funny, and then, again, in a
way it isn't."

The door banged to so that all the windows of the house rattled in their
frames.

Harran hurried out into the dining-room and there met Presley and his
father, who had been aroused as well by Annixter's clamour. Osterman was
there, too, his bald head gleaming like a bulb of ivory in the light of
the lamp that Magnus carried.

"What's all up?" demanded