ess, coming
into her husband's study, a few minutes later, and holding forth the
trophy. "It's full of food, too; and of course he never touched a
mouthful of it. But I gave him two of the frosted cakes, by way of
reward. He's ridiculously happy over them,--and over the fuss I made
about the basket."

"H'm!" mused the Master, inspecting the present. "Jostled off the
car-seat, as some fool of a driver took the curve at top speed! Well,
that same driver has paid for his recklessness, by the loss of his
lunch. It's funny, though--There's not a trace of mud or dust on this;
and even the food inside wasn't jostled about by the tumble. That curve
is paying us big dividends, lately. It's a pity no bullion trucks pass
this way. Still, parasols and picnic lunches aren't to be sneered at."

Lad was standing in the study doorway, eyes alight, tail waving. The
Master called him over and petted him; praising this newest
accomplishment of his, and prophesying untold wealth for the Place if
the graft should but continue long enough.

There was something pathetic in dear old Laddie's pleasure over the new
trick he had learned; or so it seemed to the two people who loved him.
And they continued to flatter him for it;--even when, among other
trophies, he dragged home a pickaxe momentarily laid aside by a road
mender; and an extremely dead chicken which a motor-truck wheel had
flattened to waferlike thickness.

Which brings us, by degrees to the Rennick kidnaping case.

Claude Rennick, a New York artist of considerable means, had rented for
the summer an ancient Colonial farmhouse high among the Ramapo hills;
some six miles north of the Place, There, he and his pretty young wife
and their six-months-old baby had been living for several weeks; when,
angered at a sharp rebuke for some dereliction in his work, Schwartz,
their gardener, spoke insultingly to Mrs. Rennick.

Rennick chanced to overhear. Being aggressively in love with his wife,
he did not content himself with discharging Schwartz. Instead, he
thrashed the stalwart gardener, then and there; and ended the drastic
performance by pitching the beaten man, bodily, out of the grounds.

Schwartz collected his battered anatomy and limped away to his home in
the hills just above. And, that night, he called into council his two
farmhand brothers and his wife.

Several characteristic plans of revenge were discussed in solemn
detail. These included the burning of the Rennick house o