Barr Robert
Lord Stranleigh Abroad
“I have tried, as I hinted, to enlist the co-operation of other capitalists, but experience has taught me that any appeal is futile that does not impinge directly upon cupidity. If there is the least hint of philanthropy in the project, every man of money fights shy of it.”
“I am an exception,” said Stranleigh, eagerly. “Philanthropy used to be a strong point with me, though I confess I was never very successful in its exercise. What humanitarian scheme is in your mind, Miss Maturin?”
Again she sat silent for some moments, indecision and doubt on her fair brow. Presently she said, as if pulling herself together —
“I will not tell you, Lord Stranleigh. You yourself have just admitted disbelief, and my plan is so fantastic that I dare not submit it to criticism.”
“I suppose your new city is in opposition to the old town down in the valley? You alone are going to compete with Boscombe and yourself.”
“That is one way of putting it.”
“Very well, I am with you. Blow Boscombe! say I. I’ve no head for business, so I sha’n’t need to take any advice. I shall do exactly what you tell me. What is the first move?”
“The first move is to set your brokers in New York at work, and buy a block of Powerville stock.”
“I see; so that you and I together have control, instead of Boscombe?”
“Yes.”
“That shall be done as quick as telegraph can give instructions. What next?”
“There will be required a large sum of money to liquidate the claims upon me incurred through the building of the city.”
“Very good. That money shall be at your disposal within two or three days.”
“As for security, I regret – ”
“Don’t mention it. My security is my great faith in Ned Trenton, also in yourself. Say no more about it.”
“You are very kind, Lord Stranleigh, but there is one thing I must say. This may involve you in a law-suit so serious that the litigation of which Ned complains will appear a mere amicable arrangement by comparison.”
“That’s all right and doesn’t disturb me in the least. I love a legal contest, because I have nothing to do but place it in the hands of competent lawyers. No personal activity is required of me, and I am an indolent man.”
The second part of the programme was accomplished even sooner than Stranleigh had promised, but the first part hung fire. The brokers in New York could not acquire any Powerville stock, as was shown by their application to Miss Maturin herself, neither had their efforts been executed with that secrecy which Stranleigh had enjoined. He realised this when John L. Boscombe called upon him. He went directly to the point.
“I am happy to meet you, Lord Stranleigh, and if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to say that you are more greatly in need of advice at this moment than any man in America.”
“You are perfectly right, Mr. Boscombe. I am always in need of good advice, and I appreciate it.”
“An application was made to me from New York for a block of stock. That stock is not for sale, but I dallied with the brokers, made investigations, and traced the inquiry to you.”
“Very clever of you, Mr. Boscombe.”
“I learn that you propose to finance Miss Constance Maturin, who is a junior partner in my business.”
“I should not think of contradicting so shrewd a man as yourself, Mr. Boscombe. What do you advise in the premises?”
“I advise you to get out, and quick, too.”
“If I don’t, what are you going to do to me?”
“Oh, I shall do nothing. She will do all that is necessary. That woman is stark mad, Lord Stranleigh. Her own father recognised it when he bereft her of all power in the great business he founded. If she had her way, she’d ruin the company inside a year with her hare-brained schemes; love of the dear people, and that sort of guff.”
“I am sorry to hear that. I noticed no dementia on the part of Miss Maturin, who seemed to me a most cultivated and very charming young lady. You will permit me, I hope, to thank you for your warning, and will not be surprised that I can give you no decision on the spur of the moment. I am a slow-minded person, and need time to think over things.”
“Certainly, certainly; personally I come to sudden conclusions, and once I make up my mind, I never change it.”
“A most admirable gift. I wish I possessed it.”
Lord Stranleigh said nothing of this interview to Constance Maturin, beyond telling her that the acquisition of stock appeared to be hopeless, as indeed proved to be the case.
“Boscombe must be a stubborn person,” he said.
“Oh, he’s all that,” the girl replied, with a sigh. “He cares for one thing only, the making of money, and in that I must admit he has been very successful.”
“Well, we’ve got a little cash of our own,” said Stranleigh, with a laugh.
Miss Maturin and Mrs. Vanderveldt celebrated a national holiday by the greatest entertainment ever given in that district. The mills had been shut down for a week, and every man, woman and child in the valley city had been invited up to the new town on the heights. There was a brass band, and a sumptuous spread of refreshments, all free to the immense crowd. The ladies, for days before, visited everyone in the valley, and got a promise of attendance, but to make assurance doubly sure, an amazing corps of men was organised, equipped with motor cars, which scoured the valley from Powerville downwards, gathering in such remnants of humanity as for any reason had neglected to attend the show. Miss Maturin said she was resolved this entertainment should be a feature unique in the history of the State.
The shutting down of the mills had caused the water in the immense dam to rise, so that now the sluices at the top added to the picturesqueness of the scene by supplying waterfalls more than sixty feet high, a splendid view of which was obtainable from the new city on the heights. Suddenly it was noticed that these waterfalls increased in power, until their roar filled the valley. At last the whole lip of the immense dam began to trickle, and an ever augmenting Niagara of waters poured over.
“Great heavens!” cried Boscombe, who was present to sneer at these activities, “there must have been a cloud-burst in the mountains!”
He shouted for the foreman.
“Where are the tenders of the dam?” he cried. “Send them to lower those sluices, and let more water out.”
“Wait a moment,” said Constance Maturin, who had just come out of the main telephone building. “There can be no danger, Mr. Boscombe. You always said that dam was strong enough, when I protested it wasn’t.”
“So it is strong enough, but not – ”
“Look!” she cried, pointing over the surface of the lake. “See that wave!”
“Suffering Noah and the Flood!” exclaimed Boscombe.
As he spoke, the wave burst against the dam, and now they had Niagara in reality. There was a crash, and what seemed to be a series of explosions, then the whole structure dissolved away, and before the appalled eyes of the sight-seers, the valley town crumpled up like a pack of cards, and even the tall mills themselves, that staggered at the impact of the flood, slowly settled down, and were engulfed in the seething turmoil of maddened waters.
“This,” he cried, “is murder!”
He glared at Constance Maturin, who stood pale, silent and trembling.
“I told you she was mad,” he roared at Stranleigh. “It is your money that in some devilish way has caused this catastrophe. If any lives are lost, it is rank murder!”
“It is murder,” agreed Stranleigh, quietly. “Whoever is responsible for the weakness of that dam should be hanged!”
V. – IN SEARCH OF GAME
The warm morning gave promise of a blistering hot day, as Lord Stranleigh strolled, in his usual leisurely fashion, up Fifth Avenue. High as the thermometer already stood, the young man gave no evidence that he was in the least incommoded by the temperature. In a welter of heated, hurrying people, he produced the effect of an iceberg that had somehow drifted down into the tropics. The New York tailor entrusted with the duty of clothing him quite outdistanced his London rival, who had given Lord Stranleigh the reputation of being the best-dressed man in England. Now his lordship was dangerously near the point where he might be called the best-dressed man in New York, an achievement worthy of a Prince’s ambition.
His lordship, with nothing to do, and no companionship to hope for, since everyone was at work, strolled into the splendour of the University Club and sought the comparative coolness of the smoking room, where, seating himself in that seductive invitation to laziness, a leather-covered arm chair, he began to glance over the illustrated English weeklies. He had the huge room to himself. These were business hours, and a feeling of loneliness crept over him, perhaps germinated by his sight of the illustrated papers, and accentuated by an attempted perusal of them. They were a little too stolid for a hot day, so Stranleigh turned to the lighter entertainment of the American humorous press.
Presently there entered this hall of silence the stout figure of Mr. John L. Banks, senior attorney for the Ice Trust, a man well known to Stranleigh, who had often sought his advice, with profit to both of them. The lawyer approached the lounger.
“Hello, Banks, I was just thinking of you, reflecting how delightful it must be in this weather to be connected, even remotely, with the ice supply of New York.”
Mr. Banks’s panama hat was in one hand, while the other drew a handkerchief across his perspiring brow.
“Well, Stranleigh, you’re looking very cool and collected. Enacting the part of the idle rich, I suppose?”
“No, I’m a specimen of labour unrest.”
“Perhaps I can appease that. I’m open to a deal at fair compensation for you. If you will simply parade the streets in that leisurely fashion we all admire, bearing a placard ‘Pure Ice Company,’ I’ll guarantee you a living wage and an eight hours’ day.”
“Should I be required to carry about crystal blocks of the product?”
“No; you’re frigid enough as it is. Besides, ice at the present moment is too scarce to be expended on even so important a matter as advertisement.”
Banks wheeled forward an arm chair, and sat down opposite his lordship. A useful feature of a panama hat is its flexibility. You may roll one brim to fit the hand, and use the other as a fan, and this Banks did with the perfection of practice.
“What’s the cause of the unrest, Stranleigh?”
“Thinking. That’s the cause of unrest all the world over. Whenever people begin to think, there is trouble.”
“I’ve never noticed any undue thoughtfulness in you, Stranleigh.”
“That’s just it. Thinking doesn’t agree with me, and as you hint, I rarely indulge in it, but this is a land that somehow stimulates thought, and thought compels action. Action is all very well in moderation, but in these United States of yours it is developed into a fever, or frenzy rather, curable only by a breakdown or death.”
“Do you think it’s as bad as all that?”
“Yes, I do. You call it enterprise; I call it greed. I’ve never yet met an American who knew when he’d had enough.”
“Did you ever meet an Englishman who knew that?”
“Thousands of them.”
Banks laughed.
“I imagine,” he said, “it’s all a matter of nomenclature. You think us fast over here, and doubtless you are wrong; we think you slow over there, and doubtless we are wrong. I don’t think we’re greedy. No man is so lavish in his expenditure as an American, and no man more generous. A greedy man does not spend money. Our motive power is interest in the game.”
“Yes; everyone has told me that, but I regard the phrase as an excuse, not as a reason.”
“Look here, Stranleigh, who’s been looting you? What deal have you lost? I warned you against mixing philanthropy with business, you remember.”
Stranleigh threw back his head and laughed.
“There you have it. According to you a man cannot form an opinion that is uninfluenced by his pocket. As a matter of fact, I have won all along the line. I tried the game, as you call it, hoping to find it interesting, but it doesn’t seem to me worth while. I pocket the stakes, and I am going home, in no way elated at my success, any more than I should have been discouraged had I failed.”
Leaning forward, Mr. Banks spoke as earnestly as the weather permitted.
“What you need, Stranleigh, is a doctor’s advice, not a lawyer’s. You have been just a little too long in New York, and although New Yorkers don’t believe it, there are other parts of the country worthy of consideration. Your talk, instead of being an indictment of life as you find it, has been merely an exposition of your own ignorance, a sample of that British insularity which we all deplore. I hope you don’t mind my stating the case as I see it?”
“Not at all,” said Stranleigh. “I am delighted to hear your point of view. Go on.”
“Very well; here am I plugging away during this hot weather in this hot city. Greed, says you.”
“I say nothing of the kind,” replied his lordship calmly. “I am merely lost in admiration of a hard-working man, enduring the rigours of toil in the most luxurious club of which I have ever been an honorary member. Let me soften the asperities of labour by ordering something with ice in it.”
The good-natured attorney accepted the invitation, and then went on —
“We have a saying regarding any futile proposition to the effect that it cuts no ice. This is the position of the Trust in which I am interested. In this hot weather we cut no ice, but we sell it. Winter is a peaceable season with us, and the harder the winter, the better we are pleased, but summer is a time of trouble. It is a period of complaints and law-suits, and our newspaper reading is mostly articles on the greed and general villainy of the Trust. So my position is literally that of what-you-may-call-him on the burning deck, whence almost all but he have fled to the lakes, to the mountains, to the sea shore. Now, I don’t intend to do this always. I have set a limit of accumulated cash, and when I reach it I quit. It would be high falutin’ if I said duty held me here, so I will not say it.”
“A lawyer can always out-talk a layman,” said Stranleigh, wearily, “and I suppose all this impinges on my ignorance.”
“Certainly,” said Banks. “It’s a large subject, you know. But I’ll leave theory, and come down to practice. As I said before, you’ve had too much of New York. You are known to have a little money laid by against a rainy day, so everybody wants you to invest in something, and you’ve got tired of it. Have you ever had a taste of ranch life out West?”
“I’ve never been further West than Chicago.”
“Good. When you were speaking of setting a limit to financial ambition, I remembered my old friend, Stanley Armstrong, the best companion on a shooting or fishing expedition I ever encountered. It is not to be wondered at that he is an expert in sport, for often he has had to depend on rod and gun for sustenance. He was a mining engineer, and very few know the mining west as well as he does. He might have been a millionaire or a pauper, but he chose a middle course, and set his limit at a hundred thousand pounds. When land was cheap he bought a large ranch, partly plain and partly foothills, with the eternal snow mountains beyond. Now, if you take with you an assortment of guns and fishing rods, and spend a month with Stanley Armstrong, your pessimism will evaporate.”
“A good idea,” said Stranleigh. “If you give me a letter of introduction to Mr. Armstrong, I’ll telegraph at once to be sure of accommodation.”
“Telegraph?” cried the lawyer. “He’d never get your message. I don’t suppose there’s a telegraph office within fifty miles. You don’t need a letter of introduction, but I’ll write you one, and give your name merely as Stranleigh. You won’t have any use for a title out there; in fact, it is a necessary part of my prescription that you should get away from yours, with the consequences it entails. Not that you’re likely to come across would-be investors, or any one with designs on your wealth. As for accommodation, take a tent with you, and be independent. When I return to my office, I’ll dictate full instructions for reaching the ranch.”
“Is it so difficult of access as all that?”
“You might find it so. When you reach the nearest railway station, which is a couple of days’ journey from the ranch, you can acquire a horse for yourself, and two or three men with pack mules for your belongings. They’ll guide you to Armstrong’s place.”
Stranleigh found no difficulty in getting a cavalcade together at Bleachers’ station, an amazingly long distance west of New York. A man finds little trouble in obtaining what he wants, if he never cavils at the price asked, and is willing to pay in advance. The party passed through a wild country, though for a time the road was reasonably good. It degenerated presently into a cart-track, however, and finally became a mere trail through the wilderness. As night fell, the tent was put up by the side of a brawling stream, through which they had forded.
Next morning the procession started early, but it was noon before it came to the clearing which Stranleigh rightly surmised was the outskirts of the ranch. The guide, who had been riding in front, reined in, and allowed Stranleigh to come alongside.
“That,” he said, pointing down the valley, “is Armstrong’s ranch.”
Before Stranleigh could reply, if he had intended doing so, a shot rang out from the forest, and he felt the sharp sting of a bullet in his left shoulder. The guide flung himself from the saddle with the speed of lightning, and stood with both hands upraised, his horse between himself and the unseen assailant.
“Throw up your hands!” he shouted to Stranleigh.
“Impossible!” was the quiet answer, “my left is helpless.”
“Then hold up your right.”
Stranleigh did so.
“Slide off them packs,” roared the guide to his followers, whereupon ropes were untied on the instant, and the packs slid to the ground, while the mules shook themselves, overjoyed at this sudden freedom.
“Turn back!” cried the guide. “Keep your hand up, and they won’t shoot. They want the goods.”
“Then you mean to desert me?” asked Stranleigh.
“Desert nothing!” rejoined the guide, gruffly.
“We can’t stand up against these fellows, whoever they are. We’re no posse. To fight them is the sheriff’s business. I engaged to bring you and your dunnage to Armstrong’s ranch. I’ve delivered the goods, and now it’s me for the railroad.”
“I’m going to that house,” said Stranleigh.
“The more fool you,” replied the guide, “but I guess you’ll get there safe enough, if you don’t try to save the plunder.”
The unladen mules, now bearing the men on their backs, had disappeared. The guide washed his hands of the whole affair, despite the fact that his hands were upraised. He whistled to his horse, and marched up the trail for a hundred yards or so, still without lowering his arms, then sprang into the saddle, fading out of sight in the direction his men had taken. Stranleigh sat on his horse, apparently the sole inhabitant of a lonely world.
“That comes of paying in advance,” he muttered, looking round at his abandoned luggage. Then it struck him as ridiculous that he was enacting the part of an equestrian statue, with his arm raised aloft. Still, he remembered enough of the pernicious literature that had lent enchantment to his early days, to know that in certain circumstances the holding up of hands was a safeguard not to be neglected, so he lowered his right hand, and took in it the forefinger of his left, and thus raised both arms over his head, turning round in the saddle to face the direction from whence the shots had come. Then he released the forefinger, and allowed the left arm to drop as if it had been a semaphore. He winced under the pain that this pantomime cost him, then in a loud voice he called out:
“If there is anyone within hearing, I beg to inform him that I am wounded slightly; that I carry no firearms; that my escort has vanished, and that I’m going to the house down yonder to have my injury looked after. Now’s the opportunity for a parley, if he wants it.”
He waited for some moments, but there was no response, then he gathered up the reins, and quite unmolested proceeded down the declivity until he came to the homestead.
The place appeared to be deserted, and for the first time it crossed Stranleigh’s mind that perhaps the New York lawyer had sent him on this expedition as a sort of practical joke. He couldn’t discover where the humour of it came in, but perhaps that might be the density with which his countrymen were universally credited. Nevertheless, he determined to follow the adventure to an end, and slipped from his horse, making an ineffectual attempt to fasten the bridle rein to a rail of the fence that surrounded the habitation. The horse began placidly to crop the grass, so he let it go at that, and advancing to the front door, knocked.
Presently the door was opened by an elderly woman of benign appearance, who nevertheless regarded him with some suspicion. She stood holding the door, without speaking, seemingly waiting for her unexpected visitor to proclaim his mission.
“Is this the house of Stanley Armstrong?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Is he at home? I have a letter of introduction to him.”
“No; he is not at home.”
“Do you expect him soon?”
“He is in Chicago,” answered the woman.
“In Chicago?” echoed Stranleigh. “We must have passed one another on the road. I was in Chicago myself, but it seems months ago; in fact, I can hardly believe such a place exists.” The young man smiled a little grimly, but there was no relaxation of the serious expression with which the woman had greeted him.
“What was your business with my husband?”
“No business at all; rather the reverse. Pleasure, it might be called. I expected to do a little shooting and fishing. A friend in New York kindly gave me a letter of introduction to Mr. Armstrong, who, he said, would possibly accompany me.”
“Won’t you come inside?” was her reluctant invitation. “I don’t think you told me your name.”
“My name is Stranleigh, madam. I hope you will excuse my persistence, but the truth is I have been slightly hurt, and if, as I surmise, it is inconvenient to accept me as a lodger, I should be deeply indebted for permission to remain here while I put a bandage on the wound. I must return at once to Bleachers, where I suppose I can find a physician more or less competent.”
“Hurt?” cried the woman in amazement, “and I’ve been keeping you standing there at the door. Why didn’t you tell me at once?”
“Oh, I think it’s no great matter, and the pain is not as keen as I might have expected. Still, I like to be on the safe side, and must return after I have rested for a few minutes.”
“I’m very sorry to hear of your accident,” said Mrs. Armstrong, with concern. “Sit down in that rocking-chair until I call my daughter.”
The unexpected beauty of the young woman who entered brought an expression of mild surprise to Stranleigh’s face. In spite of her homely costume, a less appreciative person than his lordship must have been struck by Miss Armstrong’s charm, and her air of intelligent refinement.
“This is Mr. Stranleigh, who has met with an accident,” said Mrs. Armstrong to her daughter.
“Merely a trifle,” Stranleigh hastened to say, “but I find I cannot raise my left arm.”
“Is it broken?” asked the girl, with some anxiety.
“I don’t think so; I fancy the trouble is in the shoulder. A rifle bullet has passed through it.”
“A rifle bullet?” echoed the girl, in a voice of alarm. “How did that happen? But – never mind telling me now. The main thing is to attend to the wound. Let me help you off with your coat.”
Stranleigh stood up.
“No exertion, please,” commanded the girl. “Bring some warm water and a sponge,” she continued, turning to her mother.
She removed Stranleigh’s coat with a dexterity that aroused his admiration. The elder woman returned with dressings and sponge, which she placed on a chair. Stranleigh’s white shirt was stained with blood, and to this Miss Armstrong applied the warm water.
“I must sacrifice your linen,” she said calmly. “Please sit down again.”
In a few moments his shoulder was bare; not the shoulder of an athlete, but nevertheless of a young man in perfect health. The girl’s soft fingers pressed it gently.
“I shall have to hurt you a little,” she said.
Stranleigh smiled.
“It is all for my good, as they say to little boys before whipping them.”
The girl smiled back at him.
“Yes; but I cannot add the complementary fiction that it hurts me more than it does you. There! Did you feel that?”
“Not more than usual.”
“There are no bones broken, which is a good thing. After all, it is a simple case, Mr. Stranleigh. You must remain quiet for a few days, and allow me to put this arm in a sling. I ought to send you off to bed, but if you promise not to exert yourself, you may sit out on the verandah where it is cool, and where the view may interest you.”
“You are very kind, Miss Armstrong, but I cannot stay. I must return to Bleachers.”
“I shall not allow you to go back,” she said with decision.
Stranleigh laughed.
“In a long and comparatively useless life I have never contradicted a lady, but on this occasion I must insist on having my own way.”
“I quite understand your reason, Mr. Stranleigh, though it is very uncomplimentary to me. It is simply an instance of man’s distrust of a woman when it comes to serious work. Like most men, you would be content to accept me as a nurse, but not as a physician. There are two doctors in Bleachers, and you are anxious to get under the care of one of them. No – please don’t trouble to deny it. You are not to blame. You are merely a victim of the universal conceit of man.”
“Ah, it is you who are not complimentary now! You must think me a very commonplace individual.”
She had thrown the coat over his shoulders, after having washed and dressed the wound. The bullet had been considerate enough to pass right through, making all probing unnecessary. With a safety-pin she attached his shirt sleeve to his shirt front.
“That will do,” she said, “until I prepare a regular sling. And now come out to the verandah. No; don’t carry the chair. There are several on the platform. Don’t try to be polite, and remember I have already ordered you to avoid exertion.”
He followed her to the broad piazza, and sat down, drawing a deep breath of admiration. Immediately in front ran a broad, clear stream of water; swift, deep, transparent.
“An ideal trout stream,” he said to himself.
A wide vista of rolling green fields stretched away to a range of foothills, overtopped in the far distance by snow mountains.
“By Jove!” he cried. “This is splendid. I have seen nothing like it out of Switzerland.”
“Talking of Switzerland,” said Miss Armstrong, seating herself opposite him, “have you ever been at Thun?”
“Oh, yes.”
“You stopped at the Thunerhof, I suppose?”
“I don’t remember what it was called, but it was the largest hotel in the place, I believe.”
“That would be the Thunerhof,” she said. “I went to a much more modest inn, the Falken, and the stream that runs in front of it reminded me of this, and made me quite lonesome for the ranch. Of course, you had the river opposite you at the Thunerhof, but there the river is half a dozen times as wide as the branch that runs past the Falken. I used to sit out on the terrace watching that stream, murmuring to its accompaniment ‘Home, sweet Home.’”
“You are by way of being a traveller, then?”
“Not a traveller, Mr. Stranleigh,” said the girl, laughing a little, “but a dabbler. I took dabs of travel, like my little visit to Thun. For more than a year I lived in Lausanne, studying my profession, and during that time I made brief excursions here and there.”
“Your profession,” asked Stranleigh, with evident astonishment.
“Yes; can’t you guess what it is, and why I am relating this bit of personal history on such very short acquaintance?”
The girl’s smile was beautiful.
“Don’t you know Europe?” she added.
“I ought to; I’m a native.”
“Then you are aware that Lausanne is a centre of medical teaching and medical practice. I am a doctor, Mr. Stranleigh. Had your wound been really serious, which it is not, and you had come under the care of either physician in Bleachers, he would have sent for me, if he knew I were at home.”
“What you have said interests me very much, Miss Armstrong, or should I say Doctor Armstrong?”
“I will answer to either designation, Mr. Stranleigh, but I should qualify the latter by adding that I am not a practising physician. ‘Professor,’ perhaps, would be the more accurate title. I am a member of the faculty in an eastern college of medicine, but by and by I hope to give up teaching, and devote myself entirely to research work. It is my ambition to become the American Madame Curie.”
“A laudable ambition, Professor, and I hope you will succeed. Do you mind if I tell you how completely wrong you are in your diagnosis of the subject now before you?”
“In my surgical diagnosis I am not wrong. Your wound will be cured in a very few days.”
“Oh, I am not impugning your medical skill. I knew the moment you spoke about your work that you were an expert. It is your diagnosis of me that is all astray. I have no such disbelief in the capacity of woman as you credit me with. I have no desire to place myself under the ministrations of either of those doctors in Bleachers. My desire for the metropolitan delights of that scattered town is of the most commonplace nature. I must buy for myself an outfit of clothes. I possess nothing in the way of raiment except what I am wearing, and part of that you’ve cut up with your scissors.”
“Surely you never came all this distance without being well provided in that respect?”
“No; I had ample supplies, and I brought them with me safely to a point within sight of this house. In fact, I came hither like a sheik of the desert, at the head of a caravan, only the animals were mules instead of camels. All went well until we came to the edge of the forest, but the moment I emerged a shot rang out, and it seemed to me I was stung by a gigantic bee, as invisible as the shooter. The guide said there was a band of robbers intent on plunder, and he and the escort acted as escorts usually do in such circumstances. They unloaded the mules with most admirable celerity, and then made off much faster than they came. I never knew a body of men so unanimous in action. They would make a splendid board of directors in a commercial company that wished to get its work accomplished without undue discussion.”
