Arrived at the little clearing on the summit, the girl took out a key and entered the hunting shelter. The ornamental porch led straight into a dining-place almost filled by the long table surrounded by benches. The porch and windows filled the north wall, a great open birch-hearth with fire-dogs, the western. Opposite was a long rack of antlers, false or real, for greatcoats, guns and bags. On the remaining side was a partition pierced by two doors. The apartment was clean and well kept--nor was this wonderful to anyone who could have seen Madeleine produce feather brush and duster, and go carefully along the pine-boarded wainscot, round mouldings and window-ledges, and along the frames of the photographs of many a jolly party--photographs in which a man, appearing variously from middle age to past it, mustached and whiskered in the fashion of his youth--which must have been the fall of the Second Empire--and a youth who passed to manhood in the newest group--were surrounded by male companions who tended to be less and less hairy the newer the picture--and women in every fashion from crinolines to gaiters and deerstalkers--live horses and dogs and dead birds and beasts, on a background of hunting shelter and trees. Madeleine hardly paused to gaze at one, but passed on, chasing spiders, fly marks, dust, and looking for damp or wormholes. She was far from being a person to stand in front of a photograph while there was work to do. Next she opened the left-hand door and peered into the little kitchen almost filled by the vase-and-coffin-style stove, at which she and others had cooked many a hot-pot and lapin-chasseur. All was in order here, and she only glanced to see that no invading hand had touched the stacked fuel, and that the iron-ringed flagstone that opened on a diminutive cellar had not been moved. She left the kitchen. Before the other door some little animation gleamed through the naturally passive, almost defensive expression--behind which she habitually concealed her thoughts. Entering this third apartment, a little upholstered lounge, twelve feet square, she closed the door softly and stood a moment without moving. It had been originally a gun-room, but the present Baron, her father’s proprietor, owner of two thousand hectares of shooting of which this shelter was the center, had turned it into a withdrawing-room for ladies, as their presence at the shooting parties became more and more usual. A divan ran under the curtained windows, west and south, a tiny fireplace was beside the door, while a corner had been carved off the kitchen for toilet purposes. Otherwise it was pine boarded and upholstered in plaited straw like the rest of the building. But the straw surfaces were covered with cushions, mats and covers, chiefly Oriental, and all collected, like the Flemish china on the walls, and the fancy photographs “Kruysabel by Moonlight,” “Morning in the Woods,” etc., etc., by Georges, the present Baron’s son.