dangling from their lips. There were trays and decanters beside each
card-table; and in the hall he passed three youths staggering about in
each other's arms and feebly singing snatches of "coon songs." Ollie
and Betty had strolled away together to parts unknown.

Montague had entered his name in the order-book to be called at nine
o'clock. The man who awakened him brought him coffee and cream upon a
silver tray, and asked him if he would have anything stronger. He was
privileged to have his breakfast in his room, if he wished; but he went
downstairs, trying his best to feel natural in his elaborate hunting
costume. No one else had appeared yet, but he found the traces of last
night cleared away, and breakfast ready--served in English fashion,
with urns of tea and coffee upon the buffet. The grave butler and his
satellites were in attendance, ready to take his order for anything
else under the sun that he fancied.

Montague preferred to go for a stroll upon the terrace, and to watch
the sunlight sparkling upon the sea. The morning was
beautiful--everything about the place was so beautiful that he wondered
how men and women could live here and not feel the spell of it.

Billy Price came down shortly afterward, clad in a khaki hunting suit,
with knee kilts and button-pockets and gun-pads and Cossack
cartridge-loops. She joined him in a stroll down the beach, and talked
to him about the coming winter season, with its leading personalities
and events,--the Horse Show, which opened next week, and the prospects
for the opera, and Mrs. de Graffenried's opening entertainment. When
they came back it was eleven o'clock, and they found most of the guests
assembled, nearly all of them looking a little pale and uncomfortable
in the merciless morning light. As the two came in they observed Bertie
Stuyvesant standing by the buffet, in the act of gulping down a tumbler
of brandy. "Bertie has taken up the 'no breakfast fad,'" said Billy
with an ironical smile.

Then began the hunt. The equipment of "Black Forest" included a granite
building, steam-heated and elaborately fitted, in which an English
expert and his assistants raised imported pheasants--magnificent
bronze-coloured birds with long, floating black tails. Just before the
opening of the season they were dumped by thousands into the
covers--fat, and almost tame enough to be fed by hand; and now came the
"hunters."

First they drew lots, for they were to hunt in pairs, a m