now an exile here in the hills, he explained, but
before he came he had lived all over the world. He had studied under
tutors while traveling about the Continent, and being prepared to take
up his work in the banking house which his grandfather had established
and his father had extended in scope. Then it had happened.

"What happened?" The child of Lake Forsaken put the question eagerly,
and his reply was laconic, though he smiled down from the buggy seat
with a peculiarly naive twist of his lips. "Bugs," he told her.

"What kind of bugs?" It seemed strange to Mary that a man would let such
small creatures as flies or spiders or even big beetles stand between
himself and a great bank.

"I beg your pardon," he laughed. "I forgot that you lived in a world
unsullied by such argot. You know what a lunger is?"

That she did know. It is a term familiar enough in the mountains to
which come refugees from the white plague, seeking in the tonic air a
healing for their sickened lungs.

"And so you see," said the strange young man, "I have built me a log
shack back in the hills where I amuse myself writing verses--which,
fortunately, no one reads--and doing equally inconsequential things.
Now I'm going down for a few days in the city. I can only go when the
weather is fine and when winter sets in, I must come back and bury
myself with no companions except some books and a pair of snowshoes."

"Are you going to die?" she asked him in large-eyed concern.

"Some day I am," he laughed. "But I'm rather stubborn. I'm going to
postpone that as long as possible. Several doctors tell me that I have
an even chance. It seems to be a sort of fifty-fifty bet between the
bugs and me. I suppose a fellow oughtn't to ask more than an even
break."

She stood regarding him with vast interest. She had never known a man
before who chatted so casually about the probable necessity of dying. He
grew as she watched him to very interesting and romantic proportions.

"What's your name?" she demanded.

"My last name's Edwardes," he told her. And it was only her own
out-of-the-world ignorance that kept her from recognizing in the name a
synonym for titanic finance. "In front of that they put a number of
ridiculous prefixes when I was quite young and helpless. There is
Jefferson and Doorland and others. At college they called me Pup."

In return for his confidence, the girl told him who she was and where
she lived and how old she was.

"You say