THE MESSENGERS

Richard Harding Davis



When Ainsley first moved to Lone Lake Farm all of his friends asked him
the same question. They wanted to know, if the farmer who sold it to him
had abandoned it as worthless, how one of the idle rich, who could not
distinguish a plough from a harrow, hoped to make it pay? His answer
was that he had not purchased the farm as a means of getting richer
by honest toil, but as a retreat from the world and as a test of true
friendship. He argued that the people he knew accepted his hospitality
at Sherry's because, in any event, they themselves would be dining
within a taxicab fare of the same place. But if to see him they
travelled all the way to Lone Lake Farm, he might feel assured that they
were friends indeed.

Lone Lake Farm was spread over many acres of rocky ravine and forest,
at a point where Connecticut approaches New York, and between it and the
nearest railroad station stretched six miles of an execrable wood road.
In this wilderness, directly upon the lonely lake, and at a spot equally
distant from each of his boundary lines, Ainsley built himself a red
brick house. Here, in solitude, he exiled himself; ostensibly to become
a gentleman farmer; in reality to wait until Polly Kirkland had made up
her mind to marry him.

Lone Lake, which gave the farm its name, was a pond hardly larger than
a city block. It was fed by hidden springs, and fringed about with reeds
and cat-tails, stunted willows and shivering birch. From its surface