Cinerea Lake was formerly known as Butternut Pond; it belonged to a Mr. Sabin; and the village was Sabin's simply. But the pond is really a lake, and it lies near a spur of the Appalachian Mountains. The place had originally been marked by a farmhouse only, to which some popular preacher had betaken himself for the summer months. In an evil moment he had come back, one autumn, and written a book about the delights of the hills; the delights that he found in the hills. In the next year seven-eighths of the ladies in his parish, and their friends, had settled upon the country, in search, they too, of the delights of the hills; they occupied the farmhouses within a radius of several miles, and crocheted. The year after that had witnessed, at only a few weeks' interval, the foundation and the completion of the Butternut Grand Hotel. And now the place was beginning to be known to that world which calls itself _society_, and which the rest of society calls fashionable. Little of all this was known to Vane, however. He understood that it was cool and crowded, and thither he accordingly went. Vane had his days of self-gratulation, like another; and it was in one of them that he left town for his vacation. He felt that soon a fortune, and a large one, would be assured him. He was an independent and successful citizen of America, with all his country before him, and the chances in his favor. He had lately seen something of a friend or two also in town for the summer; and had had an occasional little dinner with John or some other man, in the club, or by the sea; Vane was sociable enough, though not gregarious, and he felt rich in acquaintances with half a dozen or so. They were most of them still in the city; and Vane felt a sense of freedom, of adventure, as he left it, which became stronger every moment as the train flew northward. But the journey was one of many hours, and it was late in the twilight of the next afternoon before he alighted at Cinerea Lake--called Cinerea by the ladies who had looked in the lexicon to christen it anew. XX.