I remained a month in town, following implicitly the orders of Middleton & Co. We’d had a thorough understanding plus details, and I learned my twelve years abroad had made vast inroads upon my fortune, still I was several centuries from starvation. I chided the old boys for their needless anxiety—Middleton & Co. hung on to every cent they could grasp, then felt injured. Dutifully I dined at each of their homes and gave a return banquet to the club; also, I attended a few extraordinary affairs—decorations, rows of debutantes—then suddenly discovered I didn’t owe anybody anything anyhow, and quietly slipped down to my country home that I had not visited in twelve years, and which made me realize for the first time the wonderful pleasure of return. I was born in this simple, rambling, old-fashioned house, surrounded with its acres and acres of boundless wealth. I gloried in the all-pervading peace, the enervating air vibrating with sounds, each a distinct note of music and all blending in superb harmony. I strolled in the orchards, plucking luscious fruit, I gathered my own salads and indulged in the juvenile delight of hunting eggs. I rode with the men upon lofty hay wagons, and lolled countless hours in the fields, dreamily viewing the far distant valleys sloping gently upward into deep purple mountains, and in all my travels of foreign antiquity flanked with oriental splendor I could remember no land to compare with the grand, vast freshness of this beautiful home scene, nor did I consider time wasted in this sublime appreciation. It seemed the joyous, lazy hours passed in the hot sunshine were simply the rest and peace needed to nerve me for coming events that the supreme inspiration enveloped. The rural quietness did not weary me. I indulged in day dreams and enthused in a thousand plans to be banished as soon as formed, then one morning, as suddenly as I came, I left all this sultry luxury and returned to the city. With me in dreamland one entire night was Saxlehner, Professor Saxlehner, whom I had not seen or heard of in twelve years. He had appeared vivid, mirthful; we talked long, but with awakening I remembered nothing, simply he had thrust himself upon my memory and I returned to the city at once to search for him. CHAPTER II. Middleton & Co. were very hazy concerning Professor Saxlehner. Burke and Rollins knew nothing, but Middleton informed me the Professor had dropped all his old associates when he retired from the college and in return everybody had forgotten him. He (Middleton) understood Saxlehner was involved in some colossal scheme which he had “hung on to” all these years, and so far his only recompense was in testing the delights of a hermit. He lived way out somewhere in the suburbs in a little house of his own, did his own cooking, and was very crabbed to outsiders. “And why are you hunting up the man?” Middleton asked.