The point from which the Keeps elected to launch their attack was Scarboro-on-the-Hudson. They selected Scarboro because both of them could play golf, and they planned that their first skirmish should be fought and won upon the golf-links of the Sleepy Hollow Country Club. But the attack did not succeed. Something went wrong. They began to fear that the lady correspondent had given them the wrong dope. For, although three months had passed, and they had played golf together until they were as loath to clasp a golf club as a red-hot poker, they knew no one, and no one knew them. That is, they did not know the Van Wardens; and if you lived at Scarboro and were not recognized by the Van Wardens, you were not to be found on any map. Since the days of Hendrik Hudson the country-seat of the Van Wardens had looked down upon the river that bears his name, and ever since those days the Van Wardens had looked down upon everybody else. They were so proud that at all their gates they had placed signs reading, “No horses allowed. Take the other road.” The other road was an earth road used by tradespeople from Ossining; the road reserved for the Van Wardens, and automobiles, was of bluestone. It helped greatly to give the Van Warden estate the appearance of a well kept cemetery. And those Van Wardens who occupied the country-place were as cold and unsociable as the sort of people who occupy cemeteries--except “Harry” Van Warden, and she lived in New York at the Turf Club. Harry, according to all local tradition--for he frequently motored out to Warden Koopf, the Van Warden country-seat--and, according to the newspapers, was a devil of a fellow and in no sense cold or unsociable. So far as the Keeps read of him, he was always being arrested for overspeeding, or breaking his collar-bone out hunting, or losing his front teeth at polo. This greatly annoyed the proud sisters at Warden Koopf; not because Harry was arrested or had broken his collar-bone, but because it dragged the family name into the newspapers. “If you would only play polo or ride to hounds instead of playing golf,” sighed Winnie Keep to her husband, “you would meet Harry Van Warden, and he'd introduce you to his sisters, and then we could break in anywhere.” “If I was to ride to hounds,” returned her husband, “the only thing I'd break would be my neck.” The country-place of the Keeps was completely satisfactory, and for the purposes of their social comedy the stage-setting was perfect. The house was one they had rented from a man of charming taste and inflated fortune; and with it they had taken over his well-disciplined butler, his pictures, furniture, family silver, and linen. It stood upon an eminence, was heavily wooded, and surrounded by many gardens; but its chief attraction was an artificial lake well stocked with trout that lay directly below the terrace of the house and also in full view from the road to Albany.