assimilate and to judge."
"I await your pleasure," the young man said with impatience he strove to conceal.
"Very well," John Pride said, his eyes growing vague with a far-away look.
CHAPTER IV_John Pride's Story_
"I am a member," John Pride began, "of a firm called Pride, Conroy, and Wilson. We are a very old firm of private bankers with offices in Wall Street. Both Conroy and Wilson died before I was born, leaving no issue, so the company has been controlled by a Pride for many years.
"This affair in which we are interested had its inception one hundred years ago. At that time, a man came to see my great grandfather in his office. He was a most remarkable man and gained my grandfather's respect and confidence from the very first. He never stated from whence he came, being more interested in the future than in the past. He put up at a New York City hotel and my great grandfather knew there were three in his party; the man himself, another man and a woman both somewhat older than he.
"At one time when my great grandfather visited them in their hotel suite, he saw the woman fleetingly as she was leaving the room. She was carrying something that he thought could have been an infant snuggled in a blanket. He could not be sure however and he did not ask questions.
"The man was interested in obtaining a place of abode, a place that had to possess certain definite qualifications. First, it had to be built upon solid rock and set in the most secluded location possible.
"Second, it had to be so completely free of legal involvements that when he secured title, no possible claim of another could ever be taken seriously enough to even cause the property to be visited. In short, the strange man said, details relevant to the property must integrate to a point where no one would visit it for one hundred years.
"At this place in his narrative, John Pride stopped a moment to rest his voice. After a pause, the young man in the purple robe inquired, "Why do you smile?"
"At the recollection. My great grandfather had just a white elephant--"
"A white elephant?"
"Merely a descriptive term. A place that had been built before the Revolution but which even at that early time had been bypassed by the trend of progress until it was completely isolated. No one wanted it. No one would ever want it so far as my great grandfather could judge."
"Except this strange man you speak of."
"Precisely. He was delighted with the place and when my great grandfather pointed out that even with the location and the high surrounding wall there was no guarantee that wandering adventurers might not move in and take possession at some distant date, the man smiled cryptically and said he would see to it that that did not occur."
The young man was scowling. "I know that man. He is 

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