"Honestly? So would I."

"Then," said Mr. Langham, "without exposing ourselves to any other danger than that of starvation, I propose that we lose ourselves—as other people do—in short, that we remain here until one or other of us would rather—eat."

"Good gracious," said Mary, "we might be here a week!"

Mr. Langham rose slowly to his feet. Far off he could see pale smoke flitting upward through the tree-tops. He turned and looked into Miss Darling's smiling, upturned face.

"I'll just run down and tell Arthur we're not really lost," he said. "But I'll make him promise not to look for us. I'll be right back—almost before you can say 'Jack Robinson.'"

She held out her hands. He took them and helped her to her feet. And then they both laughed aloud.

"Thank Heaven," said Mary, "that whatever else you and I may suffer from, it isn't from insanity—or slim appetites! As a matter of fact, I'm famished."

"Thank God!" said Mr. Langham; "so am I."

And they began to descend the hill. For to keep men and women and adventurers going, the essential thing is food. And there's many a promising romance that has come to nothing for want of a loaf of bread and a jug of wine.

Chapter XVIII

*

In a certain part of the Land of Cotton, where they grow nothing but rice, Colonel Melville Meredith stood beside the charred foundations of a house and nursed his chin with his hand. With the exception of a sword which the King of Greece had given him, all those possessions which he had considered of value had gone up in smoke with the house of his ancestors. The family portraits were gone, the silver Lamarie, and Lesage, and all the Domingan satinwood. If Colonel Meredith had been an older man, he must almost have wept. But the grip upon his chin was not of one mourning. It was the grip of consideration. He was wondering what sort of a new house he should build upon the foundations of the old.

He must, of course, build upon the old site. There were other good sites among his thousands of acres, but none which was so well planted. A good architect could copy the Taj Mahal for you. But the Pemaque oak is one hundred and seven feet, or less, in circumference, and the avenue of oaks leading from the turnpike, two miles away, was planted in 1653. There were also divers jungles of rhododendrons, laurel, and azalea in the river garden that it had taken no less than a great-grandmother to plant.

"It can't be the first conflagration in the family," he thought. "Everybody's ancestors, at one time or another, must have lost by fire and built again. As for Pemaque—it was a lovely old house, but a new house could be just as lovely, and it could have bathrooms and be made rat-proof. And I wouldn't mind if people scratched the floors."

I have said that Colonel Meredith had lost all the possessions which he valued. But of course the land remained, the trees, the duck ponds, the alligator sloughs, and so forth. There remained, also, a robust youth, crowded with experiences and memories of wars and statesmen and of delightful people who live for pleasure. There remained, also—least valuable of all to a man of action and sentiment—a perfectly safe income, derived from bonds, of nearly two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. Colonel Meredith was by all odds the richest man in that part of the Land of Cotton, where they grow nothing but rice.