oaned the Major--"wait!" and he toddled into the hall and fell
on a chair, beating space with his pudgy hands.

When the Colonel at length learned the nature of the threatened
calamity, he utterly refused to credit it.

"Rubbish!" he said, calmly--"rubbish! my dear fellow; this man Munn is
holding out for more money, d'ye see? Rubbish! rubbish! It's blackmail,
d'ye see?"

"Do you think so?" faltered the Major, hopefully. "It isn't possible
that they mean to come, is it? Fancy all those fanatics shouting about
under our windows--"

"Rubbish!" said the Colonel, calmly. "I'll write to the fellow myself."

All through that rainy month of May the two old cronies had the
club-house to themselves; they slopped about together, fishing cheek by
jowl as they had fished for thirty years; at night they sat late over
their toddy, and disputed and bickered and wagged their fingers at each
other, and went to bed with the perfect gravity of gentlemen who could
hold their own with any toddy ever brewed.

No reply came to the Colonel, but that did not discourage him.

"They are playing a waiting game," he said, sagely. "This man Munn has
bought the land from O'Hara's daughter for a song, and he means to bleed
us. I'll write to Sprowl; he'll fix things."

Early in June Dr. Lansing and his young kinsman, De Witt Coursay,
arrived at the club-house. They, also, were of the opinion that Munn's
object was to squeeze the club by threats.

The second week in June, Peyster Sprowl, Master of Fox-hounds,
Shadowbrook, appeared with his wife, the celebrated beauty, Agatha
Sprowl, _nee_ Van Guilder.

Sprowl, now immensely large and fat, had few cares in life beyond an
anxious apprehension concerning the durability of his own digestion.
However, he was still able to make a midnight mouthful of a Welsh
rarebit on a hot mince-pie, and wash it down with a quart of champagne,
and so the world went very well with him, even if it wabbled a trifle
for his handsome wife.

"She's lovely enough," said Colonel Hyssop, gallantly, "to set every
star in heaven wabbling." To which the bull-necked Major assented with
an ever-hopeless attempt to bend at the waistband.

Meanwhile the Rev. Amasa Munn and his flock, the Shining Band, arrived
at Foxville in six farm wagons, singing "Roll, Jordan!"

Of their arrival Sprowl was totally unconscious, the Colonel having
forgotten to inform him of the threatened invasion.

II

The members of the Sagamore Clu