The next morning I walked into the village, mailed

my letter, visited the railway station with true rustic

instinct and watched the cutting out of a freight car for

Annandale with a pleasure I had not before taken in

that proceeding. The villagers stared at me blankly as

on my first visit. A group of idle laborers stopped talking

to watch me; and when I was a few yards past them

they laughed at a remark by one of the number which

I could not overhear. But I am not a particularly sensitive

person; I did not care what my Hoosier neighbors

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said of me; all I asked was that they should refrain

from shooting at the back of my head through the windows

of my own house.

On this day I really began to work. I mapped out

a course of reading, set up a draftsman's table I found

put away in a closet, and convinced myself that I was

beginning a year of devotion to architecture. Such was,

I felt, the only honest course. I should work every day

from eight until one, and my leisure I should give to

recreation and a search for the motives that lay behind

the crafts and assaults of my enemies.

When I plunged into the wood in the middle of the

afternoon it was with the definite purpose of returning

to the upper end of the lake for an interview with Morgan,

who had, so Bates informed me, a small house back

of the cottages.

I took the canoe I had chosen for my own use from

the boat-house and paddled up the lake. The air was

still warm, but the wind that blew out of the south

tasted of rain. I scanned the water and the borders of

the lake for signs of life,-more particularly, I may as

well admit, for a certain maroon-colored canoe and a

girl in a red tam-o'-shanter, but lake and summer cottages

were mine alone. I landed and began at once my

search for Morgan. There were many paths through

the woods back of the cottages, and I followed several

futilely before I at last found a small house snugly

bid away in a thicket of young maples.

The man I was looking for came to the door quickly

in response to my knock.

"Good afternoon, Morgan."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Glenarm," he said, taking the

pipe from his mouth the better to grin at me. He

showed no sign of surprise, and I was nettled by his cool

reception. There was, perhaps, a certain element of

recklessness in my visit to the house of a man who had

shown so singular an interest in my affairs, and his cool

greeting vexed me.

"Morgan-" I began.

"Won't you come in and rest yourself, Mr. Glenarm?"

he interrupted. "I reckon you're tired from your trip

over-"




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