amping!"

With which pious ejaculation the Baron inspected his smudged and
blistered fingers and read again the entertaining message from the Duke
of Connecticut.

"Why take to the highway," begged Philip guilelessly, "when the task is
so unpleasant?"

"Ah!" rumbled the Baron, more sombre now, "there is a man with a
music-machine--"

"There is!" said Philip fervently.

The Baron looked hard at His Highness, the Duke of Connecticut. The
latter produced his cigarette case and opening it politely for the
service of his chief, smiled with good humor.

"There is," said he coolly, "a man with a music-machine, a mysterious
malady, a stained skin and a volume of Herodotus! Excellency knows
the--er--romantic ensemble?"

Excellency not only knew him, but for days now, taking up the trail at
a certain canal, he had traveled hard over roads strangely littered
with hay and food and linen collars--to find that romantic ensemble.
He added with grim humor that he fancied the Duke of Connecticut knew
him too. The Duke dryly admitted that this might be so. His memory,
though conveniently porous at times, was for the most part excellent.

"What is he doing?" asked the Baron with an ominous glint of his fine
eyes.

"Excellency," said Philip, staring hard at the end of his cigarette,
"by every subtle device at his command, he is making graceful love to
Miss Westfall, who is sufficiently wholesome and happy and absorbed in
her gypsy life not to know it--yet!"

The Barents explosive "Ah!" was a compound of wrath and outraged
astonishment. Philip felt his attitude toward his chief undergoing a
subtle revolution.

"His discretion," added Philip warmly, "has departed to that forgotten
limbo which has claimed his beard."

The Baron was staring very hard at the camp fire.

"So," said he at last,--"it is for this that I have been--" he searched
for an expressive Americanism, and shrugging, invented one,
"thunder-cracking along the highway in search of the man Themar saw by
the fire of Miss Westfall. 'It is incredible--it can not be!' said I,
as I blistered about, searching here, searching there, losing my way
and thunder-cracking about in dead of night--all to pick up the trail
of a green and white van and a music-machine! 'It is unbelievable--it
is a monstrous mistake on the part of Themar!' But, Poynter, this love
making, in the circumstances, passes all belief!" The Baron added that
twice within the week he had passed