that discomfited young man, "Mr. Poynter has been good enough to make
the chowder. It would gratify me exceedingly, Baron Tregar, to have
you test it."

Heartily anathematizing his chief, who was gratefully expressing his
interest in chowder, Mr. Poynter stared perversely at his cuff.

"I wonder," he reflected uneasily, "just what he wants and how in
thunder he knew!"

The Baron, gracefully adapting himself to woodland exigencies, supplied
the answer.

"Dr. Wingate," he boomed, "is at the Sherrill farm. Themar officiously
fancied he could fly and had a most distressing fall yesterday from the
smaller biplane." His deep, compelling eyes lingered upon Philip's
face. "Dr. Wingate spoke some of an unlucky young man marooned in a
forest with a knife wound in his shoulder--described him--and
behold!--my missing secretary is found after considerable bewilderment
and uneasiness on my part. Wingate will stop here later."

Philip civilly expressed regret that he had not thought to dispatch
Johnny to the Sherrill farm with a message.

"It is nothing!" shrugged Tregar smoothly.

"One forgets under less mitigating causes." And, having begged the
details of Philip's adventure, he listened with careful attention.

"It is exceedingly mysterious," he rumbled, after a frowning interval