claimed, as he rejoined me. I judged he was classifying
Asa, but, if so, he did not trouble to lower his voice. "Come on,
Paine," he added, and we passed a long line of windows, hung with costly
curtains, and stepped up on a handsome Colonial portico before two big
doors.

The doors were opened by an imposing personage in dark blue and brass
buttons, who bowed profoundly before Colton and regarded me with
condescending superiority. This personage, whom I recognized, from
Alvin's description, as the "minister-lookin'" butler, led us through
a hall about as large as our sitting-room, dining-room and kitchen
combined, but bearing no other resemblance to these apartments, and
opened another door, through which, bowing once more, he ushered us.
Then he closed the door, leaving himself, to my relief, outside. It had
been a long time since I was waited upon by a butler and I found this
specimen rather overpowering.

The room we were in was the library, and, though it was bigger and far
more sumptuous than the library I remembered so well as a boy, the sight
of the books in their cases along the walls gave me a feeling almost of
homesickness. My resentment against my millionaire neighbor increased.
Why should he and his have everything, and the rest of us be deprived of
the little we once had?

Colton seated himself in a leather upholstered chair and waved his hand
toward another.

"Sit down," he said. He took a cigar from his pocket. "Smoke?" he asked.

I was a confirmed smoker, but I was not going to smoke one of his
cigars--not then.

"No thank you," said I. He did not comment on my refusal, but lit the
cigar himself, from the stump of his former one. Then he crossed his
legs and proceeded, with characteristic abruptness, to his subject.

"Paine," he began, "you own this land next to me, you say. Your property
ends at the fence this side of that road we just crossed, doesn't it?"

"It ends where yours begins," I announced.

"Yes. Just this side of that road."

"Of the Shore Lane. It isn't a road exactly."

"I don't care what you call it. Road or lane or cow-path. It ends
there?"

"Yes."

"And it IS your land? It belongs to you, personally, all of it, free and
clear?"

"Why--yes; it does." I could not see what business of his my ownership
of that land might be.

"All right. I asked that because, if it wasn't yours, if it was tied up
or mortgaged in any way, it might complicate matters. But it isn't."

"N