of speech. 

Colonel Hyssop awaited his comrade at the club-house, nervously pacing the long veranda, gnawing his cigar. "Hello!" he called out, as Major Brent waddled up. "Have you bought the O'Hara place for us?" 

The Major made no attempt to reply; he panted violently at the Colonel, then began to run about, taking little, short, distracted steps. "Made a mess of it?" inquired the Colonel, with a badly concealed sneer. He eyed the Major in deepening displeasure. "If you get any redder in the face you'll blow up," he said, coldly; "and I don't propose to have you spatter me." 

"He--he's an impudent swindler!" hissed the Major, convulsively. 

The Colonel sniffed: "I expected it. What of it? After all, there's nobody on the farm to annoy us, is there?" 

"Wait!" groaned the Major--"wait!" and he toddled into the hall and fell on a chair, beating space with his pudgy hands. 

When the Colonel at length learned the nature of the threatened calamity, he utterly refused to credit it. "Rubbish!" he said, calmly--"rubbish! my dear fellow; this man Munn is holding out for more money, d'ye see? Rubbish! rubbish! It's blackmail, d'ye see?" 

"Do you think so?" faltered the Major, hopefully. "It isn't possible that they mean to come, is it? Fancy all those fanatics shouting about under our windows--" 

"Rubbish!" said the Colonel, calmly. "I'll write to the fellow myself." 

All through that rainy month of May the two old cronies had the club-house to themselves; they slopped about together, fishing cheek by jowl as they had fished for thirty years; at night they sat late over their toddy, and disputed and bickered and wagged their fingers at each other, and went to bed with the perfect gravity of gentlemen who could hold their own with any toddy ever brewed. 

No reply came to the Colonel, but that did not discourage him. "They are playing a waiting game," he said, sagely. "This man Munn has bought the land from O'Hara's daughter for a song, and he means to bleed us. I'll write to Sprowl; he'll fix things." 

Early in June Dr. Lansing and his young kinsman, De Witt Coursay, arrived at the club-house. They, also, were of the opinion that Munn's object was to squeeze the club by threats. 

The second week in June, Peyster Sprowl, 

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