She was quite unaware of his presence, and yet he was directly in her path, though some distance away. Her head was bent; her mien was thoughtful, her stride slow and aimless.

The azure blue of the sweater she wore presented an inharmonious note on the field of velvety green;—it was strangely out of place, he thought,—almost an offence to the eye. He was conscious of an instant protest against this profanation.

She was slender, graceful and evidently quite tall, although she seemed a pigmy among the towering giants that attended her stroll. Her hands were thrust deep into the pockets of a white duck skirt. A glance revealed white shoes and trim ankles in blue. She wore no hat. Her hair was like spun gold, thick, wavy and shimmering in the subdued light.

Suddenly she stopped, and looked up. He had a full view of her face as she gazed about as if startled by some unexpected, even alarming, sound. For a second or two he held his breath, stunned by the amazing loveliness that was revealed to him. Then she discovered him standing there.

He was never to forget the expression that came into her eyes; nor had he ever seen eyes so blue. Alarm gave way to bewilderment as she stared at the motionless intruder not thirty feet away. Then, to his utter astonishment, her lips parted and a faint, wondering smile came into her eyes. His heart leaped. She recognised him!

In a flash he realised that he was face to face with the stranger of the day before,—she of the veil, the alluring voice, the unfaltering spirits, and the weighty handbag!

He took two or three impulsive steps forward, his hand going to his hat,—and then halted. Evidently his senses had deceived him. There was no smile in her eyes,—and yet he could have sworn that it was there an instant before. Instead, there was a level stare.

"I am sorry if I startled—" he began.

The figure of a man appeared, as if discharged bodily from some magic tree-trunk, and stood directly in his path: A tall, rugged man in overalls was he, who held a spade in his hand and eyed him inimically. Without another glance in his direction, the first and more pleasing vision turned on her heel and continued her stroll, sauntering off to the right, her fair head once more bent in study, her back eloquently indifferent to the gaze that followed her.

"Who do you want to see?" inquired the man with the spade.

Before Barnes could reply, a hearty voice accosted him from behind. He whirled and saw O'Dowd approaching, not twenty yards away. The Irishman's face was aglow with pleasure.

"I knew I couldn't be mistaken in the shape of you," he cried, advancing with outstretched hand. "You've got the breadth of a dock-hand in your shoulders, and the trimness of a prize-fighter in your waist."

They shook hands. "I fear I am trespassing," said Barnes. His glance went over his shoulder as he spoke. The man with the spade had been swallowed up by the earth! He could not have vanished more quickly in any other way. Off among the trees there were intermittent flashes of blue and white.

"I am quite sure you are," said O'Dowd promptly, but without a trace of unfriendliness in his manner. "Bedad, loving him as I do, I can't help saying that Curtis is a bally old crank. Mind ye, I'd say it to his face,—I often do, for the matter of that. Of course," he went on seriously, "he is a sick man, poor devil. I have the unholy courage to call him a chronic crank every once in awhile, and the best thing I can say for his health is that he grins when I say it to him. You see, I've known him for a dozen years and more, and he likes me, though God knows why, unless it may be that I once did his son a good turn in London."

"Sufficient excuse for reparation, I should say," smiled Barnes.

"I introduced the lad to me only sister," said O'Dowd, "and she kept him happy for the next ten years. No doubt, I also provided Mr. Curtis with three grandchildren he might never have had but for my graciousness. As for that, I let meself in for three of the most prodigious nephews a man ever had, God bless them. I'll show you a photograph of them if ye'd care to look." He opened the back of his watch and held it out to Barnes. "Nine, seven and five, and all of them as bright as Gladstone."

"They must be stunning," said Barnes warmly.

"They'll make a beggar of me, if I live long enough," groaned O'Dowd. "It beats the deuce how childer as young as they are can have discovered what a doddering fool their uncle is. Bedad, the smallest of them knows it. The very instant I pretend to be a sensible, provident, middle-aged gentleman he shows me up most shamelessly. 'Twas only a couple of months ago that his confounded blandishments wiggled a sixty-five dollar fire engine out of me. He squirted water all over the drawing-room furniture, and I haven't been allowed to put foot into the house since. My own darlin' sister refused to look at me for a week, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if she changed me namesake's title to something less enfuriating than William." A look of distress came into his merry eyes. "By Jove, I'd like nothing better than to ask you in to have a dish of tea,—it's tea-time, I'm sure,—but I'd no more think of doing it than I'd consider cutting off me head. He doesn't like strangers. He—"

"My dear fellow, don't distress yourself," cried Barnes heartily. "There isn't the least reason in the world why—"

"You see, the poor old chap asks us up here once or twice a year,—that is to say, De Soto and me,—to keep his sister from filling the house up with men he can't endure. So long as we occupy the only available rooms, he argues, she can't stuff them full of objectionables. Twice a year she comes for a month, in the late fall and early spring. He's very fond of her, and she stands by him like a major."

"Why does he continue to live in this out-of-the-world spot, Mr. O'Dowd? He is an old man, I take it, and ill."

"You wouldn't be wondering if you knew the man," said O'Dowd. "He is a scholar, a dreamer, a sufferer. He doesn't believe in doctors. He says they're all rascals. They'd keep him alive just for the sake of what they could get out of him. So he's up here to die in peace, when his time comes, and he hopes it will come soon. He doesn't want it prolonged by a grasping, greedy doctor man. It's his kidneys, you know. He's not a very old man at that. Not more than sixty-five."

"He certainly has a fanciful streak in him, building a place like that," said Barnes, looking not at the house but into the thicket above. There was no sign of the blue and white and the spun gold that still defied exclusion from his mind's eye. He had not recovered from the thrall into which the vision of loveliness plunged him. He was still a trifle dazed and distraught.

"Right you are," agreed O'Dowd; "the queerest streak in the world. It's his notion of simplicity. I wish you could see the inside of the place. You'd wonder to what exalted heights his ideas of magnificence would carry him if he calls this simplicity. He loves it all, he dotes on it. It's the only joy he knows, this bewildering creation of his. For nearly three years he has not been more than a stone's throw from the walls of that house. I doubt if he's been as far as the spot where we're standing now."

"Green Fancy. Is that the name he gave the place or does it spring from—"

"'Twas christened by me own sister, Mr. Barnes, the first time she was here, two years ago. I'll walk with you to the fence beyond if you've no objections," said O'Dowd, genially, and linked his arm through that of Barnes.

The latter was at once subtly aware of the fact that he was being deliberately conducted from the grounds. Moreover, he was now convinced that O'Dowd had been close upon his heels from the instant he entered them. There was something uncanny in the feeling that possessed him. Such espionage as this signified something deep and imperative in the presence not only of O'Dowd but the Jack-in-the-box gardener a few minutes earlier. He had the grim suspicion that he would later on encounter the spectacled De Soto.

His mind was still full of the lovely stranger about whom O'Dowd had so manifestly lied over the telephone.

"I must ask you to apologise to the young lady on whom I blundered a few moments ago, Mr. O'Dowd. She must have been startled. Pray convey to her my solicitude and excuses."

"Consider it done, my dear sir," said the Irishman. "Our most charming and seductive guest," he went on. "Bedad, of the two of you, I'll stake me head you were startled the most. Coming suddenly upon such rare loveliness is almost equivalent to being struck by a bolt of lightning. It did something like that to me when I saw her for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I didn't get over it for the better part of a day,—I can't say that I really got over it at all. More than one painter of portraits has said that she is the most beautiful woman in the world. I don't take much stock in portrait painters, but I'm always fair to the lords of creation when their opinions coincide with mine. Mayhap you have heard of her. She is Miss Cameron of New Orleans, a friend of Mrs. Van Dyke. We have quite an enchanting house-party, Mr. Barnes, if you consider no more than the feminine side of it. Unfortunate creatures! To be saddled with such ungainly lummixes as De Soto and me! By the way, have you heard when the coroner is to hold his inquests?"

"Nothing definite. He may wait a week," said Barnes.

"I suppose you'll stick around until it's all over," ventured O'Dowd. Barnes thought he detected a slight harshness in his voice.

"I have quite made up my mind to stay until the mystery is entirely cleared up," he said. "The case is so interesting that I don't want to miss a shred of it."

"I don't blame ye," said O'Dowd heartily. "I'd like nothing better meself than to mix up in it, but, Lord love ye, if I turned detective I'd also be turned out of the spare bed-room beyond, and sped on me way with curses. Well, here we are. The next time you plan to pay us a visit, telephone in advance. I may be able to persuade my host that you're a decent, law-abiding, educated gentleman, and he'll consent to receive you at Green Fancy. Good day to ye," and he shook hands with the departing trespasser.

A quarter of a mile below the spot where he parted from O'Dowd, Barnes caught a glimpse of De Soto sauntering among the trees. He smiled to himself. It was just what he had expected.

"Takin' a walk?" was the landlord's greeting as he mounted the tavern steps at dusk. Putnam Jones's gaunt figure had been discernible for some time, standing motionless at the top of the steps.

"Going over the ground of last night's affair," responded Barnes, pausing. "Any word from the sheriff and his party?"

"Nope. The blamed fools are still up there turnin' over all the loose stones they c'n find," said Jones sarcastically. "Did you get a glimpse of Green Fancy?"

Barnes nodded. "I strolled a little distance into the woods," he said briefly.

"I wouldn't do it again," said Jones. "Strangers ain't welcome. I might have told you as much if I'd thought you were going up that way. Mr. Curtis notified me a long while ago to warn my guests not to set foot on his grounds, under penalty of the law."

"Well, I escaped without injury," laughed Barnes. "No one took a shot at me."

As he entered the door he was acutely aware of an intense stare levelled at him from behind by the landlord of Hart's Tavern. Half way up the stairway he stopped short, and with difficulty repressed the exclamation that rose to his lips.

He had recalled a significant incident of the night before. Almost immediately after the departure of Roon and Paul from the Tavern, Putnam Jones had made his way to the telephone behind the desk, and had called for a number in a loud, brisk voice, but the subsequent conversation was carried on in subdued tones, attended by haste and occasional furtive glances in the direction of the tap-room.

Upon reaching his room, Barnes permitted the suppressed emotion to escape his lips in the shape of a soft whistle, which if it could have been translated into words would have said: "By Gad, why haven't I thought of it before? He sent out the warning that Roon and Paul were on the way! And I'd like to bet my last dollar that some one at Green Fancy had the other end of the wire."

Mr. Rushcroft stalked majestically into his room while he was shaving, without taking the trouble to knock at the door, and in his most impressive manner announced that if there was another hostelry within reasonable distance he would move himself, his luggage and his entire company out of Putnam Jones's incomprehensible house.

"Why, sir," he declared, "the man is not only a knave but a fool. He flatly declines the prodigious offer I have made for the corner rooms at the end of the corridor. In fact, he refuses to transfer my daughter and me from our present quarters into what might be called the royal suite if one were disposed to be facetious. The confounded blockhead insists on seeing the colour of my money in advance." He sat down on the edge of the bed, dejectedly. "My daughter, perversity personified, takes the extraordinary stand that the wretch is right. She agrees with him. She has even gone so far as to say, to my face, that beggars cannot be choosers, although I must give her credit for not using the expression in the scoundrel's presence. 'Pon my soul, Barnes, I have never been so sorely tried in all my life. Emma,—I should say, Mercedes,—denounces me to my face. She says I am a wastrel, a profligate,—(there I have her, however, for she failed to consult the dictionary before applying the word to me),—an ingrate, and a lot of other things I fail to recall in my dismay. She contends that I have no right to do what I please with my own money. Indeed, she goes so far as to say that I haven't any money at all. I have tried to explain to her the very simple principles upon which all financial transactions are based, but she remains as obtuse as Cleopatra's Needle. Her ignorance would be pitiful if she wasn't so damned obstinate about it. And to cap the climax, she had the insolence to ask me to show her a dollar in real money. By gad, sir, she's as unreasonable as Putnam Jones himself."

Barnes gallantly came to the daughter's defense. He was more than pleased by the father's revelations. They proved her to be possessed of fine feelings and a genuine sense of appreciation.

"As a matter of fact, Mr. Rushcroft, I think she is quite right," he said flatly. "It isn't a bad idea to practice economy."

"My dear sir," said Rushcroft peevishly, "where would I be now in my profession if I had practiced economy at the expense of progress?"

"I don't know," confessed Barnes, much too promptly.

"I can tell you, sir. I would be nowhere at all. I would not be the possessor of a name that is known from one end of this land to the other, a name that guarantees to the public the most elaborate productions known to—"

"Pardon me," interrupted the other; "it doesn't get you anywhere with Putnam Jones, and that is the issue at present. The government puts the portrait of George Washington on one of its greenbacks but his face and name wouldn't be worth the tenth of a penny if the United States went bankrupt. As it is, however, if you were to go downstairs and proffer one of those bills to Putnam Jones he would make his most elaborate bow and put you into the best room in the house. George Washington has backing that even Mr. Jones cannot despise. So, you see, your daughter is right. Your name and face is yet to be stamped on a government bank note, Mr. Rushcroft, and until that time comes you are no better off than I or any of the rest of the unfortunates who, being still alive, have to eat for a living."

"You speak in parables," said Mr. Rushcroft, arising. "Am I to assume that you wish to withdraw your offer to lend me—"

"Not at all," said Barnes. "My desire to stake you to the comforts and dignity your station deserves remains unchanged. If you will bear with me until I have finished shaving I will go with you to Mr. Jones and show him the colour of your money."

Mr. Rushcroft grinned shamelessly. "My daughter was right when she said another thing to me," he observed, sitting down once more.

"She appears to be more or less infallible."

"A woman in a million," said the star. "She said that I wouldn't make a hit with you if I attempted to put on too much side. I perceive that she was right,—as usual."

"Absolutely," said Barnes, with decision.

"So I'll cut it out," remarked Rushcroft quaintly. "I will be everlastingly grateful to you, Mr. Barnes, if you'll fix things up with Jones. God knows when or whether I can ever reimburse you, but as I am not really a dead-beat the time will certainly come when I may begin paying in installments. Do we understand each other?"

"We do," said Barnes, and started downstairs with him.

Half an hour later Barnes succeeded in striking a bargain with Putnam Jones. He got the two rooms at the end of the hall at half price, insisting that it was customary for every hotel to give actors a substantial reduction in rates.

"You shall be treasurer and business-manager in my reorganized company," said Rushcroft. "With your acumen and my eccentricity united in a common cause we will stagger the universe."

Despite his rehabilitation as a gentleman of means and independence, Mr. Rushcroft could not forego the pleasure of staggering a small section of the world that very night. He was giving Hamlet's address to the players in the tap-room when Barnes came downstairs at nine o'clock. Bacon and Dillingford having returned earlier in the evening with the trunks, bags and other portable chattels of the defunct "troupe," Mr. Rushcroft was performing in a sadly wrinkled Norfolk suit of grey which Dillingford was under solemn injunction to press before breakfast the next morning.

"I know I don't have to do it," said the star, catching the surprised look in Barnes's eye and pausing to explain, sotto voce, "but I hadn't the heart to refuse. They're eating it up, my dear fellow. Up to this instant they've been sitting with their mouths wide open while I hurled it, word after word, into their very vitals. "Whereupon he resumed the sonorous monologue, glowering balefully upon his transfixed hearers.

Barnes, leaning against the door-jamb, listened with an amused smile on his lips. His gaze swept the rapt faces of the dozen or more customers seated at the tables, and he found himself wondering if one of these men was the father of the little girl whose mother had described Hart's Tavern as a "shindy." Was it only yesterday that he had spoken with the barefoot child? An age seemed to have passed since that brief encounter.

Rushcroft ended Hamlet's speech in fine style, and almost instantly a mild voice from the crowd asked if he knew "Casey at the Bat." Not in the least distressed by this woeful commentary, Mr. Rushcroft cheerfully, obligingly tackled the tragic fizzle of the immortal Casey.

A small, dark man who sat alone at a table in the corner, caught Barnes's eye and smiled almost mournfully. He was undoubtedly a stranger; his action was meant to convey to Barnes the information that he too was from a distant and sophisticated community, and that a bond of sympathy existed between them.

Putnam Jones spoke suddenly at Barnes's shoulder. He started involuntarily. The man was beginning to get on his nerves. He seemed to be dogging his footsteps with ceaseless persistency.

"That feller over there in the corner," said Jones, softly, "is a book-agent from your town. He sold me a set of Dickens when he was here last time, about six weeks ago. A year's subscription to two magazines throwed in. By gosh, these book-agents are slick ones. I didn't want that set of Dickens any more'n I wanted a last year's bird's nest. The thing I'm afraid of is that he'll talk me into taking a set of Scott before he moves on. He's got me sweatin' already."

"He's a shrewd looking chap," commented Barnes.

"Says he won't be satisfied till he's made this section of the country the most cultured, refined spot in the United States," said Jones dolefully. "He brags about how much he did toward makin' Boston the literary centre of the United States, him and his father before him. Together, he says, they actually elevated Boston from the bottomless pit of ignorance and——Excuse me. There goes the telephone. Maybe it's news from the sheriff."

With the spasmodic tinkling of the telephone bell, the book-agent arose and made his way to the little office. As he passed Barnes, he winked broadly, and said, out of the corner of his mouth:

"He'd make DeWolf Hopper look sick, wouldn't he?"

Barnes glanced over his shoulder a moment later and saw the book-agent studying the register. The poise of his sleek head, however, suggested a listening attitude. Putnam Jones, not four feet away, was speaking into the telephone receiver. As the receiver was restored to its hook, Barnes turned again. Jones and the book-agent were examining the register, their heads almost meeting from opposite sides of the desk.

The latter straightened up, stretched his arms, yawned, and announced in a loud tone that he guessed he'd step out and get a bit of fresh air before turning in.

"Any news?" inquired Barnes, approaching the desk after the door had closed behind the book-agent.

"It wasn't the sheriff," replied Jones shortly, and immediately resumed his interrupted discourse on books, book-agents and the reclamation of Boston. Ten minutes elapsed before the landlord's garrulity was checked by the sound of an automobile coming to a stop in front of the house. Barnes turned expectantly toward the door. Almost immediately the car started up again, with a loud shifting of gears, and a moment later the door opened to admit, not a fresh arrival, but the little book-agent.

"Party trying to make Hornville to-night," he announced casually. "Well, good night. See you in the morning."

Barnes was not in a position to doubt the fellow's word, for the car unmistakably had gone on toward Hornville. He waited a few minutes after the man disappeared up the narrow stairway, and then proceeded to test his powers of divination. He was as sure as he could be sure of anything that had not actually come to pass, that in a short time the automobile would again pass the tavern but this time from the direction of Hornville.

Lighting a cigarette, he strolled outside. He had barely time to take a position at the darkened end of the porch before the sounds of an approaching machine came to his ears. A second or two later the lights swung around the bend in the road a quarter of a mile above Hart's Tavern, and down came the car at a high rate of speed. It dashed past the tavern with a great roar and rattle and shot off into the darkness beyond. As it rushed through the dim circle of light in front of the tavern, Barnes succeeded in obtaining a brief but convincing view of the car. That glance was enough, however. He would have been willing to go before a jury and swear that it was the same car that had deposited him at Hart's Tavern the day before.

Having guessed correctly in the one instance, he allowed himself another and even bolder guess: the little book-agent had either received a message from or delivered one to the occupant or driver of the car from Green Fancy.