'yeh know' of some young fellows to perfection."

"He IS a queer fellow," mused Mildred. "I wonder what he goes there
for?"

"Oh, Roger Atwood is no fool, I can tell you. He knows country
society in perfection, and he would not be long in understanding
Fifth Avenue noodledom just as well. He detects sham people and sham
ways as quickly as you could, and delights in ridiculing them. He
says there's a ghost of a man up there which interests him exceedingly,
but that it is such an extremely well-behaved, good-mannered ghost
that it is tolerated without remark, and that is all he will say
about it, although I have often questioned him. I can't think who
or what he means."

Mildred looked up with a sudden access of interest, and then became
silent and abstracted.

"Since the children are quiet here," continued Belle, "I'll go back
to the house and finish a story in which the hero and heroine are
sentimental geese and blind as bats. They misunderstand each other
so foolishly that I'd like to bob their empty heads together," and
away she went, humming a gay song, with as little thought for the
morrow as the birds in the fields around her.

While Roger paused a moment to wipe the perspiration from his brow,
the rustling of the grain ceased, and he heard the footfalls of a
horse in the adjacent road. With a start he saw riding by the stranger
who had been the object of his continued scrutiny at the hotel. The
young men restrained to a walk the rather restless horse he bestrode,