ght every real estate agent who
dares open a map will be arrested. We're not trying to drive people away
from Westchester, we're trying to sell them building sites."

"YOU are not!" retorted his friend, "you own half the county now, and
you're trying to buy the other half."

"I'm a justice of the peace," explained Van Vorst. "I don't know WHY I
am, except that they wished it on me. All I get out of it is trouble.
The Italians make charges against my best friends for overspeeding and
I have to fine them, and my best friends bring charges against the
Italians for poaching, and when I fine the Italians, they send me Black
Hand letters. And now every day I'll be asked to issue a warrant for
a German spy who is selecting gun sites. And he will turn out to be a
millionaire who is tired of living at the Ritz-Carlton and wants to
'own his own home' and his own golf-links. And he'll be so hot at being
arrested that he'll take his millions to Long Island and try to break
into the Piping Rock Club. And, it will be your fault!"

The young justice of the peace was right. At least so far as Jimmie
Sniffen was concerned, the words of the war prophet had filled one mind
with unrest. In the past Jimmie's idea of a holiday had been to spend it
scouting in the woods. In this pleasure he was selfish. He did not want
companions who talked, and trampled upon the dead leaves so that they
frightened the wild animals and gave the Indians warning. Jimmie
liked to pretend. He liked to fill the woods with wary and hostile
adversaries. It was a game of his own inventing. If he crept to the
top of a hill and on peering over it, surprised a fat woodchuck, he
pretended the woodchuck was a bear, weighing two hundred pounds; if,
himself unobserved, he could lie and watch, off its guard, a rabbit,
squirrel, or, most difficult of all, a crow, it became a deer and that
night at supper Jimmie made believe he was eating venison. Sometimes he
was a scout of the Continental Army and carried despatches to General
Washington. The rules of that game were that if any man ploughing in
the fields, or cutting trees in the woods, or even approaching along the
same road, saw Jimmie before Jimmie saw him, Jimmie was taken prisoner,
and before sunrise was shot as a spy. He was seldom shot. Or else why
on his sleeve was the badge for "stalking." But always to have to make
believe became monotonous. Even "dry shopping" along the Rue de la Paix
when you pretend you can ha