tunnel when he gave Willitts his instructions—go to the apartment and pack up, then see about a room. He himself would look up some places he knew of, and if he found anything suitable he'd come back to the apartment and the things could be moved to-morrow. They separated in the depot, Willitts and the luggage in a taxi, Chapman on foot. But that part of the city to which he took his way, dingy, unkempt, remote from the section where his kind dwelt, was not a place where Chapman Price, fallen from his high estate as he was, would have chosen to house himself. 

 CHAPTER II—MISS MAITLAND GETS A LETTER

It was Thursday morning, three days after her husband's departure, and Suzanne was sitting in the window seat of her room looking across the green distances to where the roof of Dick Ferguson's place, Council Oaks, rose above the tree tops. Council Oaks adjoined Grasslands, there was a short cut which connected them—a path through the woods. Before Mrs. Janney bought Grasslands the path had become moss-grown, almost obliterated. Then when she took possession the two households wore it bare again. The servants found it shortened the walk from kitchen to kitchen; Mr. Janney often footed its green windings; Dick Ferguson's father had been one of his cronies, and Dick Ferguson himself was the most constant traveler of them all. 

 Council Oaks was a very old place; it had been in the Ferguson family since the days when the British governors rolled over Long Island in their lumbering coaches. Before that the Indians had used it for a council ground, their tepees pitched under the shade of the four giant oaks from which it took its name. The Fergusons had kept the farm house, built after the Revolution, adding wings to it, till it now extended in a long, sprawl of white buildings, with the original worn stone as a step to its knockered front door, and the low, raftered ceilings, plank floors, and deep-mouthed fireplaces of its early occupation. 

 There Dick Ferguson lived all summer, going to town at intervals to attend to the business of the Ferguson estate, for, like the young man in the Bible, he had great possessions. The dead and gone Fergusons had been canny and thrifty, bought land far beyond the city limits and sat in their offices and waited until the town grew round it. It was known among the present owner's intimates that he disapproved of this method of enrichment, and that his extensive charities and endowments were an attempt to pay back what he felt he owed. He was very silent about them, only a few knew of the many secret channels through which the Ferguson 

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