ound his way into the open air. He at
once gave orders to the stablemen and gardeners to search the barn and
to turn out the strangers they might find there.

But though they hunted in every corner, they found no one, and Max was
only too glad to come to the conclusion that Mrs. Higgs had taken his
advice, and got away with as little delay as possible.

This incident, however, following so closely on the heels of his
experiences at the wharf, took away all the zest with which Max should
have entered into the programme which, by Mr. Wedmore's special wish,
had been prepared for that evening; and while Doreen and Queenie and
Mildred Appleby and two young nephews of Mr. Wedmore's chattered and
laughed, and made dinner a very lively affair, Max was quiet and what
his cousins called "grumpy," and threatened to be a wet blanket on the
evening's entertainment.

"Going to have all the servants in to dance Sir Roger!" cried he, in
dismay, when Doreen told him the news. "Good heavens! Hasn't he had a
lesson in yesterday's tomfoolery and what came of it? How do the
servants like the idea?"

"Of course they hate it," answered Doreen, "and mamma has been all day
trying to coax the cook to indulge him, and not to walk off and leave us
to cook the Christmas dinner. And, of course, this assurance that the
notion was distasteful to everybody had made papa more obstinate than
ever. Oh, we shall have a merry time."

Now, down in the depths of his heart Mr. Wedmore had begun to feel some
misgivings about his plans for keeping Christmas in the good old
fashion. But the first failure, the colossal mistake of the Yule Log,
had made him obstinate instead of yielding, and he had set his teeth and
made up his mind that they should all be merry in the way he chose, or
they should not be merry at all.

The fact was that this prosaic middle-aged gentleman, who had passed the
greater part of his life immersed in day-books and ledgers and the
details of a busy city man's life, found time hang heavy on his hands in
these prosperous days of his retirement, and in this condition he had
had his mind inflamed by pictures of the life that was led in The
Beeches by his forerunners, easy-going, hard-riding, hard-drinking
country gentlemen, with whom, if the truth were known, he had nothing in
common.

Fired by the desire to live the life they led, to enjoy it in the
pleasant old fashion, it had seemed to him an especially happy custom to
give a danc