rds, who sit around the house, to repeat aloud in honour of--"

"For Heaven's sake, Louis! How are you, Hamil?" grunted Portlaw,
extending a heavily cushioned, highly coloured hand of welcome.

Hamil and Malcourt descended; a groom blanketed the horses and took them
to the stables; and Portlaw, with a large gesture of impatient
hospitality, led the way into a great, warm living-room, snug, deeply
and softly padded, and in which the fragrance of burning birch-logs and
simmering toddy blended agreeably in the sunshine.

"For luncheon," began Portlaw with animation, "we're going to try a new
sauce on that pair of black ducks they brought in--"

"In violation of the laws of game and decency," observed Malcourt,
shedding his fur coat and unstrapping the mail-satchel from Pride's
Fall.

"_Shut_ up, Louis! Can't a man eat the things that come into his own
property?" And he continued unfolding to Hamil his luncheon programme
while, with a silver toddy-stick, heirloom from bibulous generations of
Portlaws, he stirred the steaming concoction which, he explained, had
been constructed after the great Sir William's own receipt.

"You've never tried a Molly Brant toddy? Man alive, you've wasted your
youth," he insisted, genuinely grieved. "Well, wise men, chiefs, and
sachems, here's more hair on your scalp-locks, and a fat buck to every
bow!"

Malcourt picked up his glass. "_Choh_" he said maliciously; but Portlaw
did not understand the irony in the Seminole salutation of The Black
Drink; and the impudent toast was swallowed without suspicion.

Then Hamil's luggage arrived, and he went away to inspect his quarters,
prepare for luncheon, and exchange his attire for forest dress. For he
meant to lose no time in the waste corners of the earth when Gotham town
might any day suddenly bloom like Eden with the one young blossom that
he loved.

There was not much for him in Eden now--little enough except to be in
her vicinity, near her at times, at intervals with her long enough to
exchange a word or two under the smooth mask of convention which leaves
even the eyes brightly expressionless.

Never again to touch her hand save under the formal laws sanctioned by
usage; never again to wake with the intimate fragrance of her memory on
his lips; never again to wait for the scented dusk to give them to each
other--to hear her frail gown's rustle on the terrace, her footfall in
the midnight corridor, her far, sweet hail to him from the