ers, now gossiping, were unaware that the
words were not of as light comedy as the manner. Hagar immediately began a
general conversation and asked Baron to sing "The Banks o' Ben Lomond,"
feeling sure that Mrs. Detlor did not wish to sing again. Again she sent
him a quick look of thanks and waved her fingers in protest to those who
were urging her. She clapped her hands as she saw Baron rise, and the
others, for politeness sake, could not urge her more.

* * * * *

For the stranger. Only the morning of that day he had arrived at the
pretty town of Herridon among the hills and moors, set apart for the idle
and ailing of this world. Of the world literally, for there might be seen
at the pump-room visitors from every point of the compass--Hindoo
gentlemen brought by sons who ate their legal dinners near Temple Bar;
invalided officers from Hongkong, Bombay, Aden, the Gold Coast and
otherwhere; Australian squatters and their daughters; attaches of foreign
embassies; a prince from the Straits Settlements; priests without number
from the northern counties; Scotch manufacturers; ladies wearied from the
London season; artists, actors and authors, expected to do at inopportune
times embarrassing things, and very many from Columbia, happy land, who
go to Herridon as to Westminster--to see the ruins.

It is difficult for Herridon to take its visitors seriously, and quite as
difficult for the visitors to take Herridon seriously. That is what the
stranger thought as he tramped back and forth from point to point through
the town. He had only been there twelve hours, yet he was familiar with
the place. He had the instincts and the methods of the true traveler. He
never was guilty of sightseeing in the usual sense. But it was his habit
to get general outlines fixed at once. In Paris, in London, he had taken a
map, had gone to some central spot, and had studied the cities from there;
had traveled in different directions merely to get his bearings. After
that he was quite at home. This was singular, too, for his life had been
of recent years much out of the beaten tracks of civilization. He got the
outlines of Herridon in an hour or two, and by evening he could have drawn
a pretty accurate chart of it, both as to detail and from the point of a
birdseye view at the top of the moor.

The moor had delighted him. He looked away to all quarters and saw hill
and valley wrapped in that green. He saw it under an