so?"

"You oppress me with luxuries, Oscar. Wind up the clock, and nothing will
be wanting."

Oscar unstrapped the trunks and then stood at attention in the door. He
had expected Armitage to condemn the place in bitter language, but the
proprietor of the abandoned hunting preserve was in excellent spirits,
and whistled blithely as he drew out his keys.

"The place was built by fools," declared Oscar gloomily.

"Undoubtedly! There is a saying that fools build houses and wise men live
in them--you see where that leaves us, Oscar. Let us be cheerful!"

He tried the shower and changed his raiment, while Oscar prepared coffee
and laid a cloth on the long table before the fire. When Armitage
appeared, coffee steamed in the tin pot in which it had been made. Bacon,
eggs and toast were further offered.

"You have done excellently well, Oscar. Go get your own breakfast."
Armitage dropped a lump of sugar into his coffee cup and surveyed the
room.

A large map of Virginia and a series of hunting prints hung on the
untinted walls, and there were racks for guns, and a work-bench at one
end of the room, where guns might be taken apart and cleaned. A few
novels, several three-year-old magazines and a variety of pipes remained
on the shelf above the fireplace. The house offered possibilities of
meager comfort, and that was about all. Armitage remembered what the
agent through whom he had made the purchase had said--that the place had
proved too isolated for even a hunting preserve, and that its only value
was in the timber. He was satisfied with his bargain, and would not set
up a lumber mill yet a while. He lighted a cigar and settled himself in
an easy chair before the fire, glad of the luxury of peace and quiet
after his circuitous journey and the tumult of doubt and question that
had shaken him.

He slit the wrapper of the Washington newspaper that Oscar had brought
from the mountain post-office and scanned the head-lines. He read with
care a dispatch from London that purported to reflect the sentiment of
the continental capitals toward Charles Louis, the new Emperor-king of
Austria-Hungary, and the paper dropped upon his knees and he stared into
the fire. Then he picked up a paper of earlier date and read all the
foreign despatches and the news of Washington. He was about to toss the
paper aside, when his eyes fell upon a boldly-headlined article that
caused his heart to throb fiercely. It recited the sudden reappearance