II. THE WAGER OF SQUIRE VANE

It was more than a month before the legend of the peacock
trees was again discussed in the Squire's circle. It fell out
one evening, when his eccentric taste for meals in the garden
that gathered the company round the same table, now lit with
a lamp and laid out for dinner in a glowing spring twilight.
It was even the same company, for in the few weeks intervening
they had insensibly grown more and more into each other's lives,
forming a little group like a club. The American aesthete
was of course the most active agent, his resolution to pluck
out the heart of the Cornish poet's mystery leading him again
and again to influence his flighty host for such reunions.
Even Mr. Ashe, the lawyer, seemed to have swallowed his
half-humorous prejudices; and the doctor, though a rather
sad and silent, was a companionable and considerate man.
Paynter had even read Treherne's poetry aloud, and he
read admirably; he had also read other things, not aloud,
grubbing up everything in the neighborhood, from guidebooks
to epitaphs, that could throw a light on local antiquities.
And it was that evening when the lamplight and the last daylight
had kindled the colors of the wine and silver on the table
under the tree, that he announced a new discovery.

"Say, Squire," he remarked, with one of his rare Americanisms,
"about those bogey trees of yours; I don't believe you know half the tales
told round here about them. It seems they have a way of eating things.
Not that I have any ethical objection to eating things," he continued,