n the Ranch
Number Ten lumbercamp. He had been sitting alone in his library,
smoking a pipe, and staring out of his window and across his fields.
Suddenly he sprang to his feet, went to his door, and shouted down the
long hall:

"Ho, there! Guy Little!"

The house was big; rooms had been added now and then at intervals
during the last thirty or forty years; the master's library was of
generous dimensions and could have stabled a herd of fifty horses.
This chamber was in the southwest corner of the rambling edifice; Guy
Little's quarters were diagonally across the building. But Packard
asked no tinkling electric bell; as usual he was content to stick his
head out into the hall and yell in that big, booming voice of his:

"Ho, there! Guy Little, come here!"

Having voiced his command he went back to his deep leather chair and
refilled his pipe. It was the time of early dusk; not yet were the
coal-oil lamps lighted; shadows were lengthening and merging out in the
rolling fields. Packard's eyes, withdrawn from the outdoors, wandered
along his tall and seldom-used book-shelves, fell to the one worn
volume on the table beside him, went hastily to the door. Down the
hall came the sound of quick boot-heels. He took up the single volume
and thrust it out of sight under the leather cushion of his chair. The
mechanician was in the room before he could get his pipe lighted.

"You called, m'lord?"

Guy Little stood drawn up to make the most of his very inconsiderable
height, eyes straight ahead, hands at sides, chin elevated and
stationary. Nothing was plainer than that he aped the burlesqued
English butler--unless it be that it was even more obvious that in his
chosen role he was a ridiculous failure. There never was the man less
designed by nature for the part than Guy Little.

And yet he insisted; in the beginning of his relationship with his
employer, his soul swelling with gratitude, his imagination touched by
the splendors into which his fate had led him, awed by the dominant
Packard, he had wanted always upon an occasion like this to demand
stiffly:

"You rang, your majesty?"

Packard had cursed and threatened and brow-beaten him down to----

"You called, m'lord?"

But not even old Hell-Fire Packard could get him any further.

"Yes, I called," grunted the old man. "I hollered my head off at you.
I want to know what you foun' out. Let's have it."

Guy Little made his little butler-bow.

"Your wo