r, and build us a boat-house with an upper story, and
live therein.'

They bought a bit of the beach for a trifle of money. They built a
boat-house, of which the upper half was one long dormitory, with a great
balcony at the end over the water which served as kitchen and
dining-hall. The ground floor was the lake itself, and each man who
could buy a boat tethered it there. The property, boats excepted, was in
common. By and by they bought a field in which they grew vegetables;
later they bought two cows and a pasture. The produce of the herd and
the farm helped to furnish forth the table. This accretion of wealth
took several years; some of the older men grew richer, and took to
themselves wives and villas; the ranks were always filled up by more
impecunious bachelors. The bachelors called themselves 'The Syndicate.'

The plan worked well, chiefly because of the fine air and the sunshine,
the warm starry nights, and, above all, the witchery of the lake, which
is to every man who has spent days and nights upon it like a mystical
lady-love, ever changeful and ever charming. Then, too, there was the
contrast with the hot city; the sense of need fulfilled makes men
good-natured. The one servant of the establishment, an old man who made
the beds and the dinners, was not a professional cook; the meals were
often indifferent; yet the Syndicate did not quarrel among themselves.

Some outlet for temper perhaps was needful. At any rate they had one
outside quarrel with an old Welshman named Johns, a farmer of great
importance in the place, who had sold them the land and tried, in their
opinion, to cheat them afterwards about the boundaries. Their united
rage waxed hot against Johns, and he, on his side, did nothing to
propitiate. The quarrel came to no end; it was a feud. 'Esprit de
corps,' like the fumes of wine, gives men a wholly unreasonable sense of
complacence in themselves and their belongings, whatever the belongings
may happen to be. The Syndicate learned to cherish this feud as a
valuable possession.

The Syndicate, as has been seen, had one house, one servant, and one
enemy. It also had one Baby. The Baby was the youngest member of the
community, a pretty boy who by some chance favour had obtained a bed in
the dormitory at the hoyden age of nineteen. He had a tendency to
chubbiness, and his moustache, when it did come, was merely a silken
whisp, hardly visible. He did some fagging in return for the
extraordinary fa