to negotiate a particularly difficult stymie which
Huntington had laid him on the third green. As the ball dropped into the
cup he looked up with a satisfied smile.

"You see I can play a game that I do understand, don't you, Monty? I'm
going to play this new game just as well after I'm on to it. You were
right: that little Thatcher girl is all I thought she was, but we are
absolutely unsuited. I had to find it out for myself, but now it is as
clear to me as it has been to you from the beginning. And this isn't the
only thing I've found out."

"The air is pretty clear down here, Connie; one can see a long ways."

"Yes, when he's supplied with a pair of binoculars like you and Miss
Stevens. The thing I can see clearest now is that I'm not ready to marry
any girl just at present."

Huntington stopped as he was about to swing, dropped his club, and
seized Cosden by the shoulders.

"Then you aren't going to desert me!"

"Hold on!" Cosden cried as he released himself; "you're going too fast!
Don't overlook the fact that I said 'just at present.' It may be I
shall never marry, but something tells me that there are wedding-bells
for me before I get through with it. There's no doubt at all, however,
that before that takes place I must acquire some of those flossy things
you've taught me to look for. I'm going to take a few hundred shares in
some humanizing company and see what it does for me. Then I'll find out
just what there is in it, and let the future take care of itself."

Now that Cosden had come to these eminently satisfactory conclusions
Huntington was too wise to offer any advice. His courage rose as this
responsibility rolled away from his overburdened shoulders, and he dared
hope that before he reached New York Mrs. Thatcher would voluntarily
abandon her quixotic notion concerning Merry and Hamlen. This would
leave him free to pull the strings for Billy,--but here he sighed. Could
he hope ever to bring the boy up to the standard he himself would insist
upon before permitting any thought of an alliance? And was the sigh all
because of doubts of Billy? Forty-five must give way to twenty, but he
admitted to himself that the supreme burden of all remained. If some of
those years could only be turned back! But he knew himself now, and in
that knowledge rested power.

Sunday dawned bright and clear, one of those superlative days which
Bermuda produces now and then as an aggravation to her departing
visitors, and t