s, and
horns; wild turkeys and mountain grouse to try the aim and tax the
pedestrianism of the hunter; bears had not yet gone into winter quarters,
and were mast-fed and fat; even a shot at a wolf, slyly marauding, was no
infrequent incident, and Edward Briscoe thought the place in autumn an
elysium for a sportsman.

He had to-day the prospect of a comrade in these delights from his own
city home and of his own rank in life, despite the desertion of the big
frame hotel on the bluff, but it was not the enticement of rod and gun
that had brought Julian Bayne suddenly and unexpectedly to the mountains.
His host and cousin, Edward Briscoe, was his co-executor in a kinsman's
will, and in the settlement of the estate the policy of granting a
certain power of attorney necessitated a conference more confidential
than could be safely compassed by correspondence. They discussed this as
they sat in the spacious reception hall, and had Bayne been less
preoccupied he must have noticed at once the embarrassment, nay, the look
of absolute dismay, with which Briscoe had risen to receive him, when,
unannounced, he appeared in the doorway as abruptly as if he had fallen
from the clouds. As it was, the brief colloquy on the business interests
that had brought him hither was almost concluded before the problem of
his host's manner began to intrude on Bayne's consciousness. Briscoe's
broad, florid, genial countenance expressed an unaccountable disquietude;
a flush had mounted to his forehead, which was elongated by his premature
baldness; he was pulling nervously at his long dark mustache, which
matched in tint the silky fringe of hair encircling his polished crown;
his eyes, round and brown, and glossy as a chestnut, wandered
inattentively. He did not contend on small points of feasibility,
according to his wont--for he was of an argumentative habit of mind--in
fact, his acquiescence in every detail proposed was so complete and so
unexpected that Bayne, with half his urgency unsaid, came to the end of
his proposition with as precipitate an effect as if he had stumbled upon
it in the dark.

"Well, that's agreed, is it? Easily settled! I really need not have
come--though"--with a complaisant after-thought--"it is a pleasure to
look in on you in your woodland haunts."

Briscoe suddenly leaned forward from his easy chair and laid his hand on
his cousin's knee.

"Julian," he said anxiously, "I hate to tell you--but my wife has got
that wom