from his camp in November and waddled forth upon his
annual hunt for happiness.

Something of this Hamil learned through the indiscriminate volubility of
his host who, when his feelings had been injured, was amusingly naive
for such a self-centred person.

"That damn Louis," he confided to Hamil over their after-dinner cigars,
"has kept me guessing ever since he took command here. Half the time I
don't understand what he's talking about even when I know he's making
fun of me; but, Hamil, you have no idea how I miss him."

And on another occasion a week later, while laboriously poring over some
rough plans laid out for him by Hamil:

"Louis agrees with you about this improvement business. He's dead
against my building Rhine-castle ruins on the crags, and he had the
impudence to inform me that I had a cheap mind. By God, Hamil, I can't
see anything cheap in trying to spend a quarter of a million in
decorating this infernal monotony of trees; can you?"

And Hamil, for the first time in many a day, lay back in his arm-chair
and laughed with all his heart.

He had hard work in weaning Portlaw from his Rhine castles, for the
other invariably met his objections by quoting in awful German:

"Hast du das Schloss gesehen--
Das hohe Schloss am Meer?"

--pronounced precisely as though the words were English. Which laudable
effort toward intellectual and artistic uplift Hamil never laughed at;
and there ensued always the most astonishing _causerie_ concerning art
that two men in a wilderness ever engaged in.

Young Hastings, a Yale academic and forestry graduate, did fairly well
in Malcourt's place, and was doing better every day. For one thing he
knew much more about practical forestry and the fish and game problems
than did Malcourt, who was a better organiser than executive.

He began by dumping out into a worthless and landlocked bass-pond every
brown trout in the hatchery. He then drew off the water in the
brown-trout ponds, sent in men with seines and shotguns, and finally,
with dynamite, purged the free waters of the brown danger for good and
all.

"When Malcourt comes back," observed Portlaw, "you'll have to answer for
all this."

"I won't be questioned," said Hastings, smiling.

"Oh! And what do you propose to do next?"

"If I had the money you think of spending on ruined castles "--very
respectfully--"I'd build a wall in place of that mesh-wire fence."

"Why?" asked Portlaw.

"The wire deceives