the lady passenger, in flute-like tones.

A little silence followed, except for the wind and the crackling of
the fire.

The men were seated upon the floor, having slightly mitigated its
inhospitable surface with wraps and stray pieces of boards. The man
who was placing Little Goliath windmills arose and walked about to
ease his cramped muscles.

Suddenly a triumphant shout came from him. He hurried back from a
dusky corner of the room, bearing aloft something in his hand. It was
an apple--a large, red-mottled, firm pippin, pleasing to behold. In a
paper bag on a high shelf in that corner he had found it. It could
have been no relic of the lovewrecked Redruth, for its glorious
soundness repudiated the theory that it had lain on that musty shelf
since August. No doubt some recent bivouackers, lunching in the
deserted house, had left it there.

Dunwoody--again his exploits demand for him the honours of
nomenclature--flaunted his apple in the faces of his fellow-marooners.
"See what I found, Mrs. McFarland!" he cried, vaingloriously. He held
the apple high up in the light of the fire, where it glowed a still
richer red. The lady passenger smiled calmly--always calmly.

"What a charming apple!" she murmured, clearly.

For a brief space Judge Menefee felt crushed, humiliated, relegated.
Second place galled him. Why had this blatant, obtrusive, unpolished
man of windmills been selected by Fate instead of himself to discover
the sensational apple? He could have made of the act a scene, a
function, a setting for some impromptu, fanciful discourse or piece of
comedy--and have retained the role of cynosure. Actually, the lady
passenger was regarding this ridiculous Dunboddy or Woodbundy with an
admiring smile, as if the fellow had performed a feat! And the
windmill man swelled and gyrated like a sample of his own goods,
puffed up with the wind that ever blows from the chorus land toward
the domain of the star.

While the transported Dunwoody, with his Aladdin's apple, was
receiving the fickle attentions of all, the resourceful jurist formed
a plan to recover his own laurels.

With his courtliest smile upon his heavy but classic features, Judge
Menefee advanced, and took the apple, as if to examine it, from the
hand of Dunwoody. In his hand it became Exhibit A.

"A fine apple," he said, approvingly. "Really, my dear Mr. Dudwindy,
you have eclipsed all of us as a forager. But I have an idea. This
apple shall become an