"What rent do they ask for the Murray house?" Lindsay asked Hyde that evening. Hyde scratched the back of his head. His face contracted with that mental agony which afflicts the Yankee when an exact statement is demanded of him. "Well, I shouldn't be surprised if you could get it for two hundred dollars the season," he finally brought out. Lindsay considered, but apparently not Hyde's answer; for presently he came out with a different question. "Why do they say it's haunted?" Hyde emitted a short contemptuous laugh. "Did you ever hear of any house in the country that's been empty for a number of years that worn't considered haunted?" "No," Lindsay admitted. "I am disappointed, though. I had hoped you would be able to tell me about the ghost." "Well, I can't," Hyde asserted scornfully, "nor nobody else neither." The two men smoked in silence. After a while Lindsay made the motions preliminary to rising. He knocked the ashes out of his pipe; put his pipe in his pocket; withdrew his feet from their comfortable elevation on the piazza rail. Finally he assembled his full height on the floor, but not without a prolonged stretching movement. "Well," he said, halfway through the yawn, "I guess you can tell that brother of yours that I'm going to hire the Murray house for the season." Hyde was equally if not more _dégagé_. He did not move; nor did he change his expression. "All right," he commented without enthusiasm, "I'll let him know. How soon would you like to go in, say?" "As soon as I can buy a bed." Lindsay disappeared through the doorway. * * * * * Two days later Lindsay found himself comfortably settled at Blue Meadows. Upstairs--he had of course chosen Lutetia's room--was a cot and a bureau of soft wood. Downstairs was a limited assortment of cheap china; cheaper cutlery; the meagerest possible cooking equipment. But there was an atmosphere given to Lindsay's room by Lutetia's own picture hanging above the bureau. And another to the living-room by Lutetia's own works--a miscellaneous collection of ugly-proportioned, ugly-colored, late-nineteenth-century volumes--ranged on the broad shelf above the fireplace; by Lindsay's writing materials scattered over the refectory table. Economical as he had been inside, he had exploded into extravagance outside. A Gloucester hammock swung at the back. A collection of garden materials which included a scythe, a spade, a sickle, a lawn-mower, and a hose filled one corner of the barn. Already--his back still complained of the process--he had cut the spacious lawn. He was at one and the same time sanely placid and wildly happy.