er front, dock privileges, and a
guaranty that no one shall build where it will shut off your view.
Terms reasonable. Like to buy?"

"_Non_!" snarled the other.

Chamberlain paused in his imaginative flight, and took two luscious
yellow pears from his bulging pockets.

"Have a pear?" he pleasantly offered.

The man again looked up, as if tempted, but again ejaculated "_Non_!"

Chamberlain leisurely took a satisfying bite.

"I get tired myself," he went on, "tramping over these country roads.
But it's the best way for me to do business. You don't happen to want
a good hotel, do you?"

Coarse fare and the discomforts of beggars' lodgings had told on the
Frenchman's temper, as Chamberlain had surmised. He looked up with a
show of human interest. Chamberlain went on.

"There's a fine hotel, the Hillside, over yonder, only a mile or so
away. Best place in all the region hereabouts; tip-topping set there,
too. Count Somebody-or-Other from Germany, and no end of big-wigs; so
of course they have a good cook."

Chamberlain paused and finished his second pear. The man on the stone
was furtive and uneasy, but masked his disquiet with the insolent
sneering manner that had often served him well. Chamberlain, having
once adopted the role of a garrulous traveling salesman, followed it up
with zest.

"Of course, a man can get a good meal, for that matter, at the Red
House, a little way up yonder over the hill. But it wouldn't suit a
man like you--a slow, poky place, with no style."

The man on the stone slowly turned toward Chamberlain, and at last
found voice for more than monosyllabic utterances.

"I was looking for a hotel," he said, in correct English but with a
foreign accent, "and I shall be glad to take your advice. The
Hillside, you say, is in this direction?" and he pointed along the
lower road.

"Yes," heartily assented Chamberlain, "about two miles through those
woods, and you won't make any mistake going there; it's a very good
place."

The man got up from the stone.

"And the other inn you spoke of--where is that?"

"The Red House? That's quite a long piece up over the hill--this way.
Straight road; house stands near a church; kept by a country woman
named Sallie. But the Hillside's the place for you; good style,
everything neat and handsome. And fine people!"

"Very well, thanks," cut in the other, in his sharp, rasping tones. "I
shall go to the Hillside."

He slid one hand into a po