CHAPTER XIX

A NOMADIC MINSTREL

Striking west into New York State, Diane had come into Orange County, whence she wound slowly down into northern Jersey, through the Poconos. For days now the dusty wanderers had followed the silver flash of the Delaware, coming at length from a rugged, cooler country of mountain and lake into a sunny valley cleft by the singing river. It was a goodly land of peaceful villages tucked away mid age-old trees, of garrulous, kindly folks and covered bridges, of long, lazy canals with grassy banks banding each shore of the rippling river, of tow-paths padded by the feet of bargemen and bell-hung mules and lock-tenders.

At sunset one night Diane paid her toll at a Lilliputian house built like an architectural barnacle on to the end of a covered bridge, and with a rumble of boards wound slowly through the dusty, twilight tunnel into Pennsylvania. A little later a drowsy negro passed through with a load of hay, a barking dog and a mysterious voice, with a lazy drawl, which directed the payment of the toll from among the hay. Still later a musical nomad driving an angular horse from the seat of a ramshackle cart, accoutered, among other orchestral devices, with clashing cymbals, a drum and a handle which upon being turned a trifle by the curious tollgate keeper aroused a fearful musical commotion in the cart.

From her camp on a wooded spot by the river, Diane presently watched the hay-camp anchor with maddening ease for the night. Ras built a fire, unhitched the horses, produced a variety of things from the seat of the pantry and took his table equipment from his hat. Philip smoked, removed an occasional wisp of hay from his hair and shied friendly pebbles at Richard Whittington.

Diane was busy making coffee when the third nomad appeared with his music machine, and, halting near her, alighted and fell stiffly to turning the eventful crank.

Instantly two terrible drumsticks descended and with globular extremities thumped, by no visible agency, upon the drum. The cymbals clashed—and a long music record began to unfold in segments like a papier-mache snake.

"Well," exclaimed Diane fervently, "I do wish he'd stop! For all we've seen him so often he's never bothered us like this before."

The unfortunate and frequently flagellated "Glowworm," however, continued to glow fearfully, impelled to eruptive scintillation by the crank, and the vocal lady "walked with Billy," and presently the minstrel came through the trees with his hat in his hand, his dark eyes very humble and deferential.

Now as Diane nodded pleasantly and smiled and held forth a coin, the wandering minstrel suddenly swayed, clapped his hand to his forehead with a choking groan and pitched forward senseless upon the ground at her feet. Diane jumped.

"Johnny!" she exclaimed in keen alarm, "we've another invalid. Turn him over!" But it was not Johnny who performed this service for the unfortunate minstrel. It was Mr. Poynter.

"Hum!" said Philip dryly. "That's most likely retribution. A man can't unwind all that hullabaloo without feeling the strain. Water, Johnny, and if you have some smelling salts handy, bring 'em along."

After one or two vigorous attentions on the part of Mr. Poynter, the nomad of the music machine opened his eyes and stared blankly about him. That he was not yet quite himself, however, was readily apparent, for meeting Mr. Poynter's unsmiling glance, he grew very white and faint and begged for water.

Philip supplied it without a word. After an interval of unsympathetic silence, during which the minstrel's eyes roved uncertainly about the camp and returned each time to Philip's face in a fascinated stare, he feebly strove to rise but fell back groaning.

"If—if I might stay here for but the night," he begged pathetically, his accent slightly foreign.

"That's impossible!" said Philip curtly. "I'll help you to your rumpus machine and back there in the village you will find an inn. My man will go with you."

"Philip!" exclaimed Diane with spirit. "The man is ill."

"I'm not denying it," averred Philip stubbornly. "Nor is there any denying the existence of the inn."

"How can you be so heartless!"

"One may also be prudent."

"He'll stay here of course if he wishes. The inn is a mile back."

"Diane!"

"Is he the first?" flashed Diane impetuously.

Philip reddened but his eyes were sombre. The knife and the bullet had engendered a certain cynicism.

"As you will!" said he. And consigning to Johnny the care of the invalid, who watched him depart with furtive relief, Philip strode off through the woods. Hospitality, reflected Philip unquietly, was all right in its place, but Diane was an extremist. After supper, however—for Philip was inherently kind hearted and sympathetic—he dispatched Ras to unhitch the minstrel's snorting steed and remove the eccentric music machine from the highway. Johnny had already accomplished both.

Smoking, Philip stared at the firelit hollow where his lady's fire-tinted tents glimmered spectrally through the trees. He was relieved to see that the camp's unbidden guest lay comfortably upon his own blankets by the fire.

Somehow the minstrel's face, clean-shaven, strikingly brown of skin and unmistakably foreign beneath the thatch of dark hair sparsely veined in grey, lingered hauntingly in his memory.

"Where in thunder have I seen him before?" wondered Philip restlessly. "There's something about his eyes and forehead—on the road probably, for of course I've passed him a number of times. Still—Lord!" added Philip with a burst of impatience, "what a salamander I am, to be sure! Whittington, old top, ever since I've known our gypsy lady, I've done nothing but fuss."

But, nevertheless, when Diane's camp finally settled into quiet for the night, there was a watchful sentry in the forest who did not retire to his bed of hay until Johnny was astir at daybreak. And Philip was to find his bearings in a staggering flash of memory and know no peace for many a day to come.

CHAPTER XX

THE ROMANCE OF MINSTRELSY

"I am glad to see that you are better," said Diane pleasantly.

The minstrel, who had bathed his hands and face in the river until they were darkly ruddy, bowed with singular grace and ease. That he was grave and courtly of manner and strikingly handsome to boot, Diane had already noticed with a flash of wonder.

"I owe you much," said he simply. "My life perhaps—"

"I am sure," protested Diane, "that you greatly overrate my small service."

"Day by day," exclaimed the minstrel sombrely, "I travel the summer roads in quest of health."

Not a little interested, Diane raised frankly sympathetic eyes to his in diffident question.

"The music?" said the minstrel with his slow, grave smile. "Is there not more romance and adventure in the life of a wandering minstrel than in that of an idle seeker after health? In the open one finds happiness, health, color and life!"

Diane felt a sudden tie of sympathy link her subtly to this mysterious nomad of the summer road. Simply and naturally she spoke of her own love of the wild things that filled the sylvan world with life and color.

"You look much then at the wild flowers!" he exclaimed delightedly. "There was a leaf back there on a mountain, the edge of white, a white blossom in the heart like a patch of snow—"

"Snow-on-the-mountain!" exclaimed Diane. "I've looked for it for days."

"It shall be my ambition to bring you some," said the minstrel gallantly. "I shall not forget."

Diane glanced furtively at the picturesque attire which her nomadic guest wore with a certain dashing grace, and marveled afresh. It was of ragged corduroy with a brightly colored handkerchief about the throat which foiled his vivid skin artistically. Indeed there was more of sophistication in the careful blending of colors than even the normal seeker after health might deem expedient for his purpose.

"It is to few—to none indeed save you that I have confided the secret of my minstrelsy," he said deferentially a little later. "Illness, love of adventure, a longing to brush elbows with the world, a hunger for the woodland—in the eyes of unromantic men these things are weaknesses. You and I know differently, but nevertheless it is best that I seem but a poor vagrant grinding forth a hapless tune for the coppers by the wayside."

The minstrel gazed idly at the hay-camp.

"One does not quite understand," he suggested raising handsome eyebrows in subtle disapproval; "the negro, the hay—the curious camp?"

Diane recalled Philip's unfeeling attitude of the night before.

"A happy-go-lucky young man with a taste for hay," she said. "I know little of him."

"One treasures one's confidence from the unsympathetic," ventured the minstrel. "Now the young man of the hay, I take it, is intensely practical and let us say—unromantic. Lest he laugh and scoff—" he shrugged and glanced furtively at the girl's face. It was brightly flushed and very lovely. The velvet dusk of Diane's eyes was sparkling with the zest of woodland adventure. To repose a confidence in one so spirited and beautiful was fascinating sport—and safe.

Now the minstrel found as the morning waned that he was not so strong as he had fancied. Wherefore he lay humbly by the fire and talked of his fortunes by the roadside. Bits of philosophy, of sparkling jest, of vivid description, to these Diane listened with parted lips and eyes alive with wholesome interest as her guest contrived to veil himself in a silken web of romance and mystery.

It was sunset before the girl felt uncomfortably that he ought to go. A little later, on her way to the van, she found a volume of Herodotus in the original Greek which with a becoming air of guilt the minstrel owned that he had dropped.

"Ah, Herodotus!" he murmured, smiling. "After all, was he not the wandering, romantic father of all of us who are nomads!"

"I wonder," said a lazy voice among the trees, "I wonder now if old Herodotus ever heard of a hay-camp."

Removing a wisp of hay from his shoe with a certain matter-of-fact grace characteristic of him, Mr. Poynter, who had been invisible all day, arrived in the camp of the enemy. Diane saw with a fretful flash of wonder that he was immaculate as usual. She saw too that the minstrel was annoyed and that he dropped the volume of Herodotus into his pocket with a flush and a frown.

"I trust," said Philip politely, "that you are better?"

Save for a slight dizziness, the minstrel said, he was.

"And yet," urged Philip feelingly, "I'm sure you'll not take to the road to-night, feeling wobbly. The inn back there in the village is immensely attractive. And a bed is the place for a sick man."

"He will remain where he is," flashed Diane perversely, "until he feels quite able to go on."

"Will you?" asked Philip pointedly.

The minstrel rose weakly and glanced at Diane with profound gratitude.

"After all," he said hurriedly, "he is doubtless right. Ill or not I must go on."

"An excellent notion!" approved Philip cordially. "I'll go with you."

Now whether or not the hurry and excitement of rising in these somewhat frictional circumstances brought on a recurrence of the nomad's singular disease, Diane did not know, but certainly he staggered and fell back, faint and moaning by the fire, thereby arousing an immediate commotion.

Philip grimly took his pulse and met Diane's sympathetic glance with one of honest indignation.

"Diane," he said in a low voice, "he is tricking you into sympathy merely for the comfort of your camp. Twice now his fainting has been attended by an absolutely normal pulse. Let Ras and Johnny carry him back to his rumpus machine and I'll drive him to the inn."

"You'll do nothing of the sort!" exclaimed the girl with flaming color. "Why are you so suspicious?"

Philip sighed.

CHAPTER XXI

AT THE GRAY OF DAWN

It was very quiet in the wood by the river. A late moon swung its golden censer above the water by invisible chains, marking checkered aisles of light in the silent wood, burnishing elfin rosaries of dew, touching with cool, white fingers of benediction the leaf-cowled heads of stately trees. Like lines of solemn monks they stood listening raptly to the deep, full chant of the moving river. The sylvan mass of the night was a thing of infinite peace and mystery, of silence and solemnity.

Into the hush of the moonlit night came presently a jarring note, the infernal racket of a motorcycle. Philip, a lone sentry by the camp of his lady, stirred and frowned. The clatter ceased. Once again the lap of the restless river and the rustle of trees were the only sounds in the silent wood. Philip glanced at the muffled figure of the minstrel asleep on the ground by the dead embers of the camp fire, and leaning carelessly upon his elbow, fell again into the train of thought disturbed by the clatter.

"Herodotus!" said Philip. "Hum!" And roused to instant alertness by the crackle of a twig in the forest, he glanced sharply roadwards where the trees thinned.

There was something moving stealthily along in the shadows. With narrowed eyes the sentry noiselessly flattened himself upon the ground and fell to watching.

A stealthy crackle—and silence. A moving shadow—a halt!

A patch of moonlight lay ahead. For an interval which to Philip seemed unending, there was no sound or movement, then a figure glided swiftly through the patch of moonlight and approached the camp. It was a man in the garb of a motorcyclist.

Noiselessly Philip shifted his position. The cyclist crept to the shelter of a tree and halted.

The moon now hung above the wood. Its light, showering softly through the trees as the night wind swayed the branches, fell presently upon the camp and the face of the cyclist.

It was Themar.

Now as Philip watched, Themar crouched suddenly and fell to staring at the muffled figure by the camp fire. For an interval he crouched motionless; then with infinite caution he moved to the right. A branch swept his cap back from his forehead and Philip saw now that his face was white and staring.

And in that instant as he glanced at the horrified face of the Houdanian, Philip knew. The stained skin, the smooth-shaven chin and lip of the minstrel—if Themar had found them puzzling, the revealment had come to him, as it had come to Philip, in a flash of bewilderment.

With a bound, the startled American was on his feet, stealing rapidly toward the man by the tree. To the spying, the mystery, the infernal trickery and masquerading which dogged his lady's trail, Themar held the key, wherefore—

Cursing, Philip forged ahead. The carpet of dry twigs beneath him had betrayed his approach and Themar was running wildly through the forest.

On and on they went, stumbling and flying through the moonlit wood to the towpath. But Philip was much the better runner and soon caught the fleeing cyclist by the collar with a grip of steel.

"Poynter!" panted Themar, staring.

"At your service!" Mr. Poynter assured him and politely begged instant and accurate knowledge of a number of things, of a knife and a bullet, of Themar's spying, of a cuff, of the man by the fire who read Herodotus, of a motorcyclist seeking for days to overtake a nomad.

"I—I dare not tell," faltered Themar, moistening his lips. "I—I am bound by an oath—"

"To spy and steal and murder!"

Themar stared sullenly at the river, gray now with the coming dawn. His dark face was drawn and haggard.

And again Mr. Poynter shot a volley of questions and awaited the answers with dangerous quiet.

Shaking, Themar refused again to answer. With even more quietness and courtesy Philip obligingly gave him a final opportunity and finding Themar white and inexorable, smiled.

"Very well, then," said Mr. Poynter warmly, "I'll take it out of your hide." Which he proceeded to do with that consummate thoroughness which characterized his every action, husbanding the strength of his long, lean arms until a knife appeared in Themar's hand. Then in deadly silence Mr. Poynter reduced his treacherous assailant to a battered hulk upon the towpath.

A mule bell tinkled in the quiet.

Upstream on the path between canal and river two mules appeared with a man slouching heavily behind them. The towline led to a grimy scow which loomed out of the misty stillness like a heavier drift of the dawn itself.

"Hello!" Philip hailed the mule driver.

"What's wantin'?" asked the man and halted.

Philip indicated Themar with his foot.

"Here is a gentleman," he explained, "whom I discovered lurking about my camp a while ago. He showed me his knife and I've mussed him up a bit."

The mule-driver bent over Themar and sharply scanned the dark, foreign face.

"One o' them damned black-and-tans, eh?" he growled. "They're too ready with their knives. What ye goin' to do with him?"

"I'm wondering," shrugged Philip, smoothing his rumpled hair back from his forehead with the palm of his hand, "if you'll permit me to pay his passage to a hospital, the farther away, the better."

The mule-driver glanced searchingly at Mr. Poynter's face. Apparently satisfied, he cupped his mouth with his hands and called "Ho, Jem!"

"Jem" jerked sharply at the tiller and presently the scow scraped the shore. The mule-driver consigned the care of his mules to Philip and scrambled down the grassy bank to the edge of the water.

"Where ye want him took?" demanded Jem, scratching a bristling shock of hair which glimmered through the dawn like a thicket of spikes.

"Well," said Mr. Poynter indifferently, "where are you going?"

Jem named a town many miles away. The mule-driver looked hard again at Philip.

"Gawd, young feller," he admired, "you're a cool un all right!"

"Take him there," said Philip with the utmost composure. "Deliver him somewhere a reasonable distance off for repairs and I'll pay you fifty dollars."

"See here," broke in Jem, somewhat staggered by the careless manner in which Mr. Poynter handled fortunes, "hain't no foul play about this here, eh? Asher says he's mussed up considerable."

"Asher's right," admitted Mr. Poynter modestly. "I did the best I could, of course. Come up and look him over. He's decorated mournfully with fist marks, but nothing worse. There's his knife."

After a somewhat cautious inspection, Themar was hoisted aboard the scow and harnessed discreetly with ropes. Jem shared his companion's distrust of black-and-tans. With a tinkle of mule-bells the cortege faded away into the gray of dawn.

Later, Mr. Poynter discovered an abandoned motorcycle by the roadside, which with some little malice he had crated at the nearest town and dispatched to Baron Tregar.

Thereafter, after a warning talk with Johnny, Philip slept by day and watched by night.

CHAPTER XXII

SYLVAN SUITORS

Southward wound the green and white van; southward the hay-camp with infrequent scurries to inn and barn for shelter; southward, his health still improving, went the musical nomad, unwinding his musical hullabaloo for the torture of musical crowds.

Now the world was a-riot with the life and color of midsummer. Sleepy cows browsed about in fields dotted with orange daisies, horses switched their tails against the cloudless sky on distant hillsides, sheep freckled the sunny pastures, and here and there beneath an apple tree heavy with fruit, lumbered a mother-sow with her litter of pigs. Sun-bleached dust clouded the highway and the swaying fields of corn were slim and tall.

The shuttle of Fate clicked and clicked as she wove and crossed and tangled the threads of these wandering, sun-brown nomads. How frequently the path of the music machine crossed the path of the van, no one knew so well perhaps as Philip, but Philip at times was tantalizing and mysterious and only evidenced his knowledge in peculiar and singularly aggravating ways.

For the friendship between Diane and the handsome minstrel was steadily growing. By what subtle hints, by what ingenuous bursts of confidence, by what bewildering flashes of inherent magnetism he contrived to cement it, who may say? But surely his romantic resources like his irresistible charm of speech and manner, were varied. A rare flower, an original and highly commendable bit of woodland verse, some luxury of fruit or camping device, in a hundred delicate ways he contrived to make the girl his debtor, talking much in his grave and courtly way of the gratitude he owed her. Adroitly then this romantic minstrel spun his shining, varicolored web, linking them together as sympathetic nomads of the summer road; adroitly too he banned Philip, who by reason of a growing and mysterious habit of sleeping by day had gained for himself a blighting reputation of callous indifference to the charm of the beautiful rolling country all around them.

"I'm exceedingly sorry," read a scroll of birch bark which Ras drowsily delivered to Diane one sunset, "but I'll have to ask you to invite me to supper. Ras bought an unhappy can of something or other behind in the village and it exploded.

"Philip."

"If I refuse," Diane wrote on the back, "you'll come anyway. You always do. Why write? Will you contribute enough hay for a cushion? Johnny's making a new one for Rex."

It was one of the vexing problems of Diane's nomadic life, just how to treat Mr. Philip Poynter. It was increasingly difficult to ignore or quarrel with him—for his memory was too alarmingly porous to cherish a grudge or resentment. When a man has had a bump upon his only head, held Mr. Poynter, things are apt to slip away from him. Wherefore one may pardon him if after repeated commands to go home, and certain frost-bitten truths about officious young men, he somehow forgot and reappeared in the camp of the enemy in radiant good humor.

Philip presently arrived with a generous layer of hay under his arm and a flour bag of tomatoes.

"Hello," he called warmly. "Isn't the sunset bully! It even woke old Ras up and he's blinking and grumbling like fury." Mr. Poynter fell to chatting pleasantly, meanwhile removing from his clothing certain wisps of hay.

"You're always getting into hay or getting out of it!" accused Diane.

Philip admitted with regret that this might be so and Diane stared hopelessly at his immaculate linen. Heaven alone knew by what ingenuity Mr. Poynter, handicapped by the peculiar limitations of a hay-camp, contrived to manage his wardrobe. What mysterious toilet paraphernalia lay beneath the hay, what occasional laundry chores Ras did by brook and river, what purchases Mr. Poynter made in every village, and finally what an endless trail of shirts and cuffs and collars lay behind him, doomed, like the cheese and buns, as he feelingly put it, to one-night stands, only Ras and Philip knew; but certainly the hay-nomad combined the minimum of effort with the maximum of efficiency to the marvel of all who beheld him. Ras's problem was infinitely simpler. He never changed. There was much of the original load of hay, Philip said, dispersed about his ears and pockets and fringing the back of his neck.

"Where did you get tomatoes?" inquired Diane at supper.

"Well," said Philip, "I hate to tell you. I strongly suspect Ras of spearing 'em with a harpoon he made. Made it in his sleep, too. It's pretty long and he can spear whatever he wants from the wagon seat. Lord help the rabbits!" He lazily sprinkled salt upon a large tomato and bit into it with relish. "But why should I worry?" he commented smiling. "They're mighty good. Johnny, old top, see if you can rustle up a loaf of bread to lend me for breakfast, will you? I'm willing to trade three cucumbers for it. And tell Ras when you take his supper over that there's a herring under the seat for Dick Whittington's supper. Tell me," he added humorously to Diane, "just how do you contrive to remember bread and salt?"

"I don't," said Diane, smiling. "Johnny does. Did the storm get you last night, Philip?"

"It did indeed. It's the third load of hay we've had this week. We're perpetually furling up the tarpaulin or unfurling it or skinning the mattress or watching the clouds. I'm a wreck."

"Where have you been all day?"

"Haying!" said Philip promptly.

"Sleeping!" corrected Diane with a critical sniff.

Mr. Poynter fancied they were synonyms.

"Do you know," he added pointedly, "I imagine I'd find ever so much more romance and adventure about it if I only had some interesting ailment and a music-mill. I did think I had a bully cough, but it was only a wisp of hay in my throat."

Philip's powers of intuition were most fearful. Diane colored.

"Just what do you mean?" she inquired cautiously.

"Nothing at all," replied Philip with a charming smile. "I never do. Why mean anything when words come so easy without? It has occurred to me," he added innocently, "that it takes an uncommonly thick-skinned and unromantic dub to tour about covered with hay. Fancy sleeping through this wild and beautiful country when I might be grinding up lost chords to annoy the populace."

Diane had heard something of this sort before from quite another source. Acutely uncomfortable, she changed the subject. There was something uncanny in Philip's perfect comprehension of the minstrel's tactics.

A little later Mr. Poynter produced a green bug mounted eccentrically upon a bit of birch bark.

"I found a bug," he said guilelessly. "He was a very nice little bug. I thought you'd like him."

Diane frowned. For every flower the minstrel brought, Philip contrived a ridiculous parallel.

"How many times," she begged hopelessly, "must I tell you that I am not collecting ridiculous bugs?"

Philip raised expressive eyebrows.

"Dear me!" said he in hurt surprise. "You do surprise me. Why, he's the greenest bug I ever saw and he matches the van. He's a nomad with the wild romance of the woodland bounding through him. I did think I'd score heavily with him."

Diane discreetly ignored the inference. Whistling happily, Mr. Poynter poured the coffee and leaned back against a tree trunk. Watching him one might have read in his fine eyes a keener appreciation of nomadic life—and nomads—than he ever expressed.

There was idyllic peace and quiet in this grove of ancient oaks shot with the ruddy color of the sunset. Off in the heavier aisles of golden gloom already there were slightly bluish shadows of the coming twilight. Hungry robins piped excitedly, woodpeckers bored for worms and flaming orioles flashed by on golden wings. Black against the sky the crows were sailing swiftly toward the woodland.

With the twilight and a young moon Philip produced his wildwood pipe and fell to smoking with a sigh of comfort.

"Philip!" said Diane suddenly.

"Mademoiselle!" said Philip, suspiciously grave and courtly of manner. The girl glanced at him sharply.

"It annoys me exceedingly," she went on finally, finding his laughing glance much too bland and friendly to harbor guile, "to have you trailing after me in a hay-wagon."

"I'll buy me a rumpus machine," said Philip.

"It would bother me to have you trailing after me so persistently in any guise!" flashed the girl indignantly.

"It must perforce continue to bother you!" regretted Philip. "Besides," he added absently, "I'm really the Duke of Connecticut in disguise, touring about for my health, and the therapeutic value of hay is enormous."

Now why Diane's cheeks should blaze so hotly at this aristocratic claim of Mr. Poynter's, who may say? But certainly she glanced with swift suspicion at her tranquil guest, who met her eyes with supreme good humor, laughed and fell to whistling softly to himself. Despite a certain significant silence in the camp of his lady, Mr. Poynter smoked most comfortably, puffing forth ingenious smoke-rings which he lazily sought to string upon his pipestem and busily engaging himself in a variety of other conspicuously peaceful occupations. All in all, there was something so tranquil and soothing in the very sight of him that Diane unbent in spite of herself.

"If you'd only join a peace tribunal as delegate-at-large," she said, "you'd eliminate war. I meant to freeze you into going home. I do wish I could stay indignant!"

"Don't," begged Philip humbly. "I'm so much happier when you're not.

"There is another way of managing me," he said hopefully a little later. "I meant to mention it before—"

"What is it?" implored Diane.

"Marry me!"

"Philip!" exclaimed the girl with delicate disdain, "the moon is on your head—"

"Yes," admitted Philip, "it is. It does get me. No denying it. Doesn't it ever get you?"

"No," said Diane. "Besides, I never bumped my brain—"

"That could be remedied," hinted Philip, "if you think it would alter matters—"

Diane was quite sure it would not and later Philip departed for the hay-camp in the best of spirits. In the morning Diane found a conspicuous placard hung upon a tree. The placard bore a bombastic ode, most clever in its trenchant satire, entitled—"To a Wild Mosquito—by One who Knows!"

Since an ill-fated occasion when Mr. Poynter had found a neatly indited ode to a wild geranium written in a flowing foreign hand, his literary output had been prodigious. Dirges, odes, sonnets and elegies frequently appeared in spectacular places about the camp and as Mr. Poynter's highly sympathetic nature led him to eulogize the lowlier and less poetic life of the woodland, the result was frequently of striking originality.

Convinced that Mr. Poynter's eyes were upon her from the hay-camp, Diane read the ode with absolute gravity and consigned it to the fire.

The minstrel's attitude toward the hay-nomad might be one of subtle undermining and shrugging ridicule, but surely with his imperturbable gift of satire, Mr. Poynter held the cards!

Still another morning Diane found a book at the edge of her camp.

"I am dropping this accidentally as I leave," read the fly leaf in Philip's scrawl. "I don't want you to suspect my classic tastes, but what can I do if you find the book!"

It was a volume of Herodotus in the original Greek!