r
of animated frames that showed the S. P. C. A. hadn't got as far as
It'ly yet. Think of riding from the Battery to White Plains in a Fifth
Avenue stage! That would be a chariot race to what we took before we
hove in sight of that punky castle. After that it was like climbing
three sets of Palisades, one top of the other, on a road that did the
corkscrew all the way.

"That's your castle, is it?" says I, rubberin' up at it. "Looks like a
storage warehouse stranded on Pike's Peak. Gee, but I wouldn't like to
fall out of one of those bedroom windows! You'd never hit anything for
an hour. Handy place to have company, though; wouldn't have to put on
the potatoes until you saw 'em coming. So that's a castle, is it? I
don't wonder old Blue Beak had a lot of conversation to unload. If I
live up there all summer I shall accumulate enough talk to last me the
rest of my life."

"Oh, I don't imagine we'll be lonesome," puts in the Boss. "I fancy I
caught sight of one or two of our neighbors on the way."

"You did?" says I. "Where?"

"Behind the rocks," says he, kind of snickering.

But I never savvied. I'd had my eyes glued to that dago Waldorf-Astoria
balanced up there on that toothpick of a mountain. I had a batty idea
that the next whiff of breeze would jar it loose. But when they'd opened
up a gate like the double doors of an armory, and let us in, I forgot
all that. Say, that castle was the solidest thing I ever run across. The
walls were so thick that the windows looked like they were set at the
end of tunnels. In the middle was a big court, such as they have in
these swell new apartment houses, and a lot of doors and windows opened
on that.

"Much as 'leven rooms and bath, eh?" says I.

"The Count assures me that there are two hundred and odd rooms, not
reckoning the dungeons," said the Boss. "I hope we'll find one or two of
them fit to live in."

We did, just about that. A white-headed old villain, who looked as if
he'd just escaped from a "Pirates of Penzance" chorus--Vincenzo, he
called himself--took our credentials and then showed us around the shop.
There was a dining-room about the size of the Grand Central train shed.
Say, a Harlem man would have wept for joy at sight of it. And there was
a picture gallery that had Steve Brodie's collection beat a mile. As for
bedrooms, there was enough to accommodate a State convention. The only
running water in sight, though, was in the fountain out in the court,
and th