which slopes to a
lake of the same name. Covering this bare spot are huge piles of sawed
lumber--Monteith's axe-razors did the shaving--surrounding an enormous
mill surmounted by a smokestack of wrought iron topped with a bird-cage
spark arrester, the whole flanked by a runway emerging from the lake,
up which climb in mournful procession the stately bodies of fallen
monarchs awaiting the cutting irony of the saw. Farther along, on
another clearing, stands a square building labelled "Office," and still
farther on, guarded by sentinel trees and encircled by wide piazzas,
sprawls a low-roofed bungalow, its main entrance level with a boardwalk
ending in the lake. This was Monteith's home. Here during the winter's
logging he housed himself in complete seclusion, and here in summer he
kept open house for whoever would answer in person his welcoming
letters.

Anything so rude and primeval, or so comforting and inviting, was
beyond the experience of Muggles and his friends. This became apparent
before they had shed their coats and unpacked their bags. There was a
darky who answered to the name of Jackson who could not only crisp
trout to a turn, but who could compound cocktails, rub down muscular
backs shivering from morning plunges in the lake, make beds, clean
guns, wait on the table, and in an emergency row a canoe. There were
easy chairs and low-pitched divans overspread with Turkey rugs and
heaped with piles of silk cushions; there were wooden lockers, all
open, and each one filled with drinkables and smokables--drinkables
with white labels, and smokables six inches long with cuffs halfway
down their length; there was an ice-chest sampling a larger house in
the rear; there was a big, wide, all-embracing fireplace that burst its
sides laughing over the good time it was having (the air was cool at
night), and outside, redolent with perfume and glistening in the
sunshine, there was a bed of mint protected by a curbing of plank which
rivalled in its sweet freshness those covering the last resting-places
of the most hospitable of Virginians.

And there was Monteith!

Some men are born rich; some inherit a pair of scissors fitted to
strong thumbs and forefingers, some have to lie awake nights wondering
what they will do next to help their surplus run to waste, and some
pass sleepless hours devising plans by which they can catch in their
empty pockets the clippings and drippings of all three. Muggles's host
was none of these.