“Thank you—ah, thank you. You’re very kind. I’m sure I should enjoy myself immensely.” “We have overlooked the fact,” the doctor whispered to me, “that your friend proposed to buy the Great Buchonian.” “He is worth anything from twenty to thirty million dollars—four to five million pounds,” I answered, knowing that it would be hopeless to explain. “Really! That is enormous wealth. But the Great Buchonian is not in the market.” “Perhaps he does not want to buy it now.” “It would be impossible under any circumstances,” said the doctor. “How characteristic!” murmured the lawyer, reviewing matters in his mind. “I always understood from books that your countrymen were in a hurry. And so you would have gone forty miles to town and back—before dinner—to get a scarab? How intensely American! But you talk exactly like an Englishman, Mr. Sargent.” “That is a fault that can be remedied. There’s only one question I’d like to ask you. You said it was inconceivable that any man should stop a train on your road?” “And so it is—absolutely inconceivable.” “Any sane man, that is?” “That is what I meant, of course. I mean, with excep—” “Thank you.” The two men departed. Wilton checked himself as he was about to fill a pipe, took one of my cigars instead, and was silent for fifteen minutes. Then said he: “Have you got a list of the Southampton sailings on you?” Far away from the greystone wings, the dark cedars, the faultless gravel drives, and the mint-sauce lawns of Holt Hangars runs a river called the Hudson, whose unkempt banks are covered with the palaces of those wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. Here, where the hoot of the Haverstraw brick-barge-tug answers the howl of the locomotive on either shore, you shall find, with a complete installation of electric light, nickel-plated binnacles, and a calliope attachment to her steam-whistle, the twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going steam-yacht _Columbia_, lying at her private pier, to take to his office, at an average speed of seventeen knots an hour,—and the barges can look out for themselves,—Wilton Sargent, American. MY SUNDAY AT HOME If the Red Slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep and pass and turn again. EMERSON.