are what Rupert refers to as
'state bedrooms.'"

"Yes?" He opened the nearest door and whistled softly. "Not so bad.
About the size of a small union station and provided with all the
comforts of a tomb. Decidedly not what we want."

"Wait, here's a plaque set in the wall. Look!" She ran her finger over a
glass-covered square.

"Regulations for guests, or a floor plan to show how to reach the
dining-room in the quickest way," her brother suggested.

"No." She read aloud slowly:

"'This Room Was Occupied by General Andrew Jackson, the Victor
of the Battle of New Orleans, upon the Tenth Day after the
Battle.'"

"Whew! 'Old Hickory' here! But I thought that the Ralestones were more
or less under a cloud at that time," commented Val.

"History--"

"In the making. Quite so. Now may I suggest that we find some slumber
rooms slightly more modern? Rupert is apt to become annoyed at undue
delay in such matters."

They went down the hall and turned into a short cross corridor. From a
round window at the far end a ray of sun still swept in, but it was a
sickly, faded ray. The storm Rupert had spoken of could not be far off.

"This is the right way. Mr. Harrison had these little numbers put on the
doors for his guests," Ricky pointed out. "I'll take 'three'; that was
marked on the plan he sent us as a lady's room. You take that one across
the hall and let Rupert have the one next to you."

The rooms they explored were not as imposing as the one which had
sheltered Andrew Jackson for a night. Furnished with chintz-covered
chairs, solid mahogany bedsteads and highboys, they were pleasant enough
even if they weren't chambers to make an antique dealer "Oh!" and "Ah!"
Val discovered with approval some stiff prints of mathematically correct
clippers hung in exact patterns on his walls, while Ricky's room held
one treasure, a dainty dressing-table.

A small door near the end of the hall gave upon a linen closet. And
Ricky, throwing her short white jacket and hat upon the chair in her
room, set about making beds, having given Val strict orders to return to
the lower hall and sort out the luggage before bringing it up.

As he reached the wide landing he stopped a moment. Since that winter
night, almost a year in the past, when a passenger plane had decided--in
spite of its pilot--to make a landing on a mountainside, he had learned
to hobble where he had once run. The accident having made his right leg
a rather