On this day I really began to work. I mapped out a course of reading, set up a draftsman’s table I found put away in a closet, and convinced myself that I was beginning a year of devotion to architecture. Such was, I felt, the only honest course. I should work every day from eight until one, and my leisure I should give to recreation and a search for the motives that lay behind the crafts and assaults of my enemies.

When I plunged into the wood in the middle of the afternoon it was with the definite purpose of returning to the upper end of the lake for an interview with Morgan, who had, so Bates informed me, a small house back of the cottages.

I took the canoe I had chosen for my own use from the boat-house and paddled up the lake. The air was still warm, but the wind that blew out of the south tasted of rain. I scanned the water and the borders of the lake for signs of life,—more particularly, I may as well admit, for a certain maroon-colored canoe and a girl in a red tam-o’-shanter, but lake and summer cottages were mine alone. I landed and began at once my search for Morgan. There were many paths through the woods back of the cottages, and I followed several futilely before I at last found a small house snugly hid away in a thicket of young maples.

The man I was looking for came to the door quickly in response to my knock.

“Good afternoon, Morgan.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Glenarm,” he said, taking the pipe from his mouth the better to grin at me. He showed no sign of surprise, and I was nettled by his cool reception. There was, perhaps, a certain element of recklessness in my visit to the house of a man who had shown so singular an interest in my affairs, and his cool greeting vexed me.

“Morgan—” I began.

“Won’t you come in and rest yourself, Mr. Glenarm?” he interrupted. “I reckon you’re tired from your trip over—”

“Thank you, no,” I snapped.

“Suit yourself, Mr. Glenarm.” He seemed to like my name and gave it a disagreeable drawling emphasis.

“Morgan, you are an infernal blackguard. You have tried twice to kill me—”

“We’ll call it that, if you like,”—and he grinned. “But you’d better cut off one for this.”

He lifted the gray fedora hat from his head, and poked his finger through a hole in the top.