The next morning he left town for the Benningtons' bungalow in the Adirondacks. He carried his fishing-rods, for Patty had told him that their lake was alive with black bass. Warrington was an ardent angler. Rain might deluge him, the sun scorch, but he would sit in a boat all day for a possible strike. He arrived at two in the afternoon, and found John, Kate and Patty at the village station. A buckboard took them into the heart of the forest, and the penetrating, resinous perfumes tingled Warrington's nostrils. He had been in the woods in years gone by; not a tree or a shrub that he did not know. It was nearly a two hours' drive to the lake, which was circled by lordly mountains. "Isn't it beautiful?" asked Patty, with a kind of proprietary pride. "It is as fine as anything in the Alps," Warrington admitted. "Shall we go a-fishing in the morning?" "If you can get up early enough." "Trust me!" enthusiastically. "I netted one this morning that weighed three pounds." "Fish grow more rapidly out of water than in," railingly. "John, didn't that bass weigh three pounds?" Patty appealed. "It weighed three and a half." "I apologize," said Warrington humbly. "How's the politician?" whispered Kate, eagerly. "About to find himself in the heart of a great scandal. The enemy has located us, and this afternoon the Times is to come out with a broadside. I haven't the least idea what it will say, nor care." "That's the proper way to talk," replied Kate approvingly. "We climbed that bald mountain yesterday. Patty took some beautiful photographs." "The tip of your nose is beginning to peel," said Warrington irrelevantly. "It's horrid of you to mention it. I'm not used to the sun, but I love it. Patty is teaching me how to bait a hook." "I'd like to see a photograph of that," Warrington cried. "Say, John, is there any way of getting to-night's newspapers up here?" "Nothing till to-morrow morning. The boat leaves the mail at night. But what's this talk about politics?" John demanded. Warrington looked at Patty and Kate in honest amazement. "Do you two mean to tell me," he asked, "that you have really kept the news from John?" "You told us not to tell," said Kate reproachfully. "Well, I see that I shall never get any nearer the truth about women. I thought sure they'd tell you, Jack, that I'm going to run for mayor this fall." "No!" "Truth. And it's going to be the fight of my life. I accepted in the spirit of fun, but I am dead in earnest now. Whichever way it goes, it will be a good fight. And you may lay to that, my lad, as our friend Long John Silver used to say." He said nothing, however, of his interview with McQuade. That was one of the things he thought best to keep to himself.