"I shall forget what you say," the old gentleman, immeasurably pleased, frowned sternly to ease his conscience. "But you can be of no service to him! He knows his country like a book!" "It isn't to his country I'd advise him to go. No one would think, for instance, of looking for him in our house at home. He could keep on studying, too; and after awhile this thing would blow over." The light in Colonel May's face was eloquent of a greater affection than he had at any time felt for Brent, but he simply said: "Then I should lose you both! What is your other plan?" "The other plan is something I am not at liberty to tell even you," Brent soberly answered. After several minutes, during which the older man seemed to be thinking deeply, he struck his fist on the arm of his chair, exclaiming: "I don't see why it's so damned important to tell Jess, anyhow! Why, sir, the fellow may not be dead, at all! And you mustn't lose sight of the fact, sir, that Dale is my guest, entitled by a higher law to my protection!" "Now that you mention it, I believe you are right," Brent cried, as though this were sparklingly original. "Let's act on the suggestion!" Sometime later, after they had gone, Zack came out to gather up the goblets. For several minutes he stood with one of these in his hand, staring with a perplexed and troubled frown at a julep which had not been tasted. "Dar ain' no fly in it, dat's suah," he mumbled, "but I cyarn' see what de trubble is! An' it ain' Marse John's, 'caze he drinked his'n whilst I wuz heah! De onlies' answer is dat Marse Brent done lef it fer de ole nigger!" With a stealthy look toward Miss Liz's windows he backed into the shrubbery and transferred the julep to a place where it might receive more consideration; then, after doing a few steps of a double-shuffle, he emerged and walked airily to the house. CHAPTER XXIII THE SECOND PLAN Brent's room was across the hall from Dale's. These two, engineer and mountaineer, were the only occupants of the third floor, known since their arrival as Bachelors' Belfry. This floor, however, was far from resembling a belfry. Its high ceilings and spacious rooms were of the type which architects drew in the early nineteenth century, when labor cost but its feed and materials were everywhere at hand. Just as the bricks in the outside walls were laid "every other one a header," so the interior spoke of a style which went out of existence three generations ago. More recently, however, the Colonel had added a furnace and baths, converting for the latter several entire bed-rooms with which Arden was over supplied. Thus Bachelors' Belfry might have been considered the most agreeable, even as the most isolated, portion of the house; and, as its occupants passed a law forbidding women servants to ascend above the second floor between five in the afternoon and nine in the morning, conventions of attire were not by your leave, but as you please.