of these, placed opposite in the rooms,
came again broken glimpses of the grassy space within the quadrangle,
with its leafless locust-trees, first of all to yield their foliage to
the autumn wind, where a tiny owl was shrilling stridulously under the
lonely red sky and the melancholy moon.

"Hed ye 'lowed ter, put up at the old hotel?" asked Roxby, some inherent
quickness supplying the lack of a definite answer.

For the first time the stranger turned upon him a look more expressive
than the casual fragmentary attention with which he had half heeded,
half ignored his talk since their first encounter at the railway
station.

"A simple fellow, but good as gold," was the phrase with which Simeon
Roxby had been commended as guide and in some sort guard.

"Not so simple, perhaps," the sophisticated man thought as their eyes
met. Not so simple but that the truth must serve. "The colonel suggested
that it might be best," he replied, more alert to the present moment
than his languid preoccupation had heretofore permitted.

The answer was good as far as it went. A few days spent in the old
hostelry certainly would serve well to acquaint the prospective
purchaser with its actual condition and the measures and means needed
for its repair; but as Sim Roxby stood there, with the cry of the owl
shrilling in the desert air, the lonely red sky, the ominous tilted
moon, the doors drearily flapping to and fro as the wind stole into the
forlorn and empty place and sped back affrighted, he marvelled at the
refuge contemplated.

"I believe there is some of the furniture here yet. We could contrive to
set up a bed from what is left. The colonel could make it all right with
Holden, and I could stay a day or two, as we originally planned."

"Ye-es. I don't mind Holden: a man ain't much in charge of a place ez
ain't got a lock or a key ter bless itself with, an' takes the owel an'
the fox an' the gopher fur boarders; but, ennyhow, kem with me home ter
supper. Mill'cent will hev it ready by now ennyhows, an' ye need suthin'
hearty an' hot ter stiffen ye up ter move inter sech quarters ez these."
Dundas hesitated, but the mountaineer had already taken assent for
granted, and pushed his horse into a sharp trot. Evidently a refusal was
not in order. Dundas pressed forward, and they rode together along the
winding way past the ten-pin alley, its long low roof half hidden in the
encroaching undergrowth springing up apace beneath the great tre