able land which lay outside of the forest, and which really
belonged to him, there were the houses of the men who farmed his fields,
and on the outskirts of the woods were scattered here and there the cabins
of the hunters and guides he employed, and these men knew no law but his
will. Of course the laws of the State covered the district, but such
promulgation and enforcement of these as he might consider necessary were
generally left to Peter Sadler, and as to his own laws, he was always
there to see that these were observed.

His guests submitted themselves to his will, or they left his hotel very
soon. To people of discernment and judgment it was not difficult to submit
to the will of this full-bearded, broad-chested man, who knew so much
better than they did what they ought to do if they wanted to get all the
good out of Sadler's which they were capable of assimilating.

This man, who sat all day in a big rolling-chair, and who knew everything
that was going on in the hotel, the farm, and the forest about him, had
been a hunter and a guide in his youth, an Indian-fighter in later years,
and when he had been wounded in both legs, so that it was impossible for
him ever to walk again, he came back to the scenes of his youth and
established an inn for sportsmen--a poor little house at first, which grew
and grew and grew, until it was the large, well-kept hotel so widely known
by his name.

After dinner, at which meal they were waited upon by women, and not by men
in evening-dress as Margery had begun to fear, Mr. Archibald sought Peter
Sadler and made known to him the surprise of his party at finding
themselves in this fine hotel.

"What did you expect?" asked Peter, eying him from head to foot.

"From what we had heard," replied the other, "we supposed we should find
some sort of a preparatory camping-ground in the woods, from which we
could go out and have a camp of our own."

"That's just what you have found," said Sadler. "In this house you prepare
to camp, if you need preparation. If any man, woman, or child comes here
and wants to go out to camp, and I see that they are sickly or weak or in
any way not fit to live in the woods, I don't let them go one step until
they are fit for it. The air and the food and the water they get here will
make them fit, if anything will do it, and if these three things don't set
them up they simply have to go back where they came from. They can't go
into camp from this house. Bu