no with the yellowing
keys, the haircloth sofa and chairs, the steel engravings, and the two
oil portraits, when Orde's large figure darkened the door.

For an instant the young man, who must just have come in from the
outside sunshine, blinked into the dimness. Newmark, too, blinked back,
although he could by this time see perfectly well.

Newmark had known Orde only as a riverman. Like most Easterners, then
and now, he was unable to imagine a man in rough clothes as being
anything but essentially a rough man. The figure he saw before him
was decently and correctly dressed in what was then the proper Sunday
costume. His big figure set off the cloth to advantage, and even his
wind-reddened face seemed toned down and refined by the change in
costume and surroundings.

"Oh, it's you, Mr. Newmark!" cried Orde in his hearty way, and holding
out his hand. "I'm glad to see you. Where you been? Come on out of
there. This is the 'company place.'" Without awaiting a reply, he led
the way into the narrow hall, whence the two entered another, brighter
room, in which Grandma Orde sat, the canary singing above her head.

"Mother," said Orde, "this is Mr. Newmark, who was with us on the drive
this spring."

Grandma Orde laid her gold-bowed glasses and her black leather Bible on
the stand beside her.

"Mr. Newmark and I spoke at the door," said she, extending her frail
hand with dignity. "If you were on the drive, Mr. Newmark, you must have
been one of the High Privates in this dreadful war we all read about."

Newmark laughed and made some appropriate reply. A few moments later,
at Orde's suggestion, the two passed out a side door and back into the
remains of the old orchard.

"It's pretty nice here under the trees," said Orde. "Sit down and light
up. Where you been for the last couple of weeks?"

"I caught Johnson's drive and went on down river with him to the lake,"
replied Newmark, thrusting the offered cigar in one corner of his mouth
and shaking his head at Orde's proffer of a light.

"You must like camp life."

"I do not like it at all," negatived Newmark emphatically, "but the
drive interested me. It interested me so much that I've come back to
talk to you about it."

"Fire ahead," acquiesced Orde.

"I'm going to ask you a few questions about yourself, and you can answer
them or not, just as you please."

"Oh, I'm not bashful about my career," laughed Orde.

"How old are you?" inquired Newmark abruptly.

"