box coat and brought his mail to him.

"I advised Gerald to go home," observed Selwyn carelessly; "he is not
perfectly well."

Neergard's tiny mouse-like eyes, set close together, stole brightly in
Selwyn's direction; but they usually looked just a little past a man,
seldom at him.

"Grippe?" he asked.

"I don't think so," said Selwyn.

"Lots of grippe 'round town," observed Neergard, as though satisfied
that Gerald had it. Then he sat down and rubbed his large, membranous
ears.

"Captain Selwyn," he began, "I'm satisfied that it's a devilish good
thing."

"Are you?"

"Emphatically. I've mastered the details--virtually all of 'em. Here's
the situation in a grain of wheat!--the Siowitha Club owns a thousand or
so acres of oak scrub, pine scrub, sand and weeds, and controls four
thousand more; that is to say--the club pays the farmers' rents and
fixes their fences and awards them odd jobs and prizes for the farm
sustaining the biggest number of bevies. Also the club pays them to
maintain the millet and buckwheat patches and to act as wardens. In
return the farmers post their four thousand acres for the exclusive