y now, please. And be ready to turn to the left at a point
that doesn't show much beforehand."

They were proceeding through somewhat sparsely settled country, though
marked here and there by comfortable farmhouses of a more than
ordinarily attractive type--apparently homes of prosperous people with
an eye to appearances. Then quite suddenly the car, rounding a turn,
came into a different region, one of cultivated wildness, of studied
effects so cleverly disguised that they would seem to the unobservant
only the efforts of nature at her best. A long, heavily shaded avenue of
oaks, with high, untrimmed hedges of shrubbery on each side, curved
enticingly before them, and all at once, Burns, looking sharply ahead,
called, "There, by that big pine, Aleck--to the left." In a minute more
the car turned in at a point where a rough stone gateway marked the
entrance to nothing more extraordinary than a pleasant wood.

"Patient lives in a hut in the forest?" King inquired with interest.
"Or a rich man's hunting lodge?"

"You'll soon see." Burns's eyes were ahead; a slight smile touched his
lips.

The car swept around curve after curve of the wood, came out upon the
shore of a small lake and, skirting it halfway round, plunged into a
grove of pines. Then, quite without warning, there showed beyond the
pines a long, white-plumed row of small trees of a sort unmistakable--in
May. Beside the row lay a garden, gay with all manner of spring flowers,
and farther, through the trees, began to gleam the long, low outlines of
a great house.

"Stop just here, Aleck, for a minute," Burns requested, and the car came
to a standstill. Burns looked at Jordan King.

"Ever see that row of white lilacs before, Jord?" he asked with
interest.

King was staring at it, a strange expression of mingled perplexity and
astonishment upon his fine, dark face. After a minute he turned to
Burns.

"What--when--where--" he stammered, and stopped, gazing again at the
lilac hedge and the box-bordered beds with their splashes of bright
colour.

"Well, I don't know what, when, or where, if you don't," Burns returned.

But evidently King did know, or it came to him at that instant, for he
set his lips in a certain peculiar way which his friend understood meant
an attempt at quick disguise of strong feeling. He gave his mother one
glance and sat back in his seat. Then he looked again at Burns. "What is
this, anyway?" he asked rather sternly. "The home of y