"I know! Let's play leopard shooting! I saw a picture of one in the geography. It looked just like Fiddles." Fiddles was the plethoric Maltese member of the Blake family. "We've got those tin guns, and we can stalk it. What do you say?"

That which they said was later evidenced; for when Thomas Cathcart Blake entered the front door of his residence that night and started up the stairs, he was met by an excited feline, followed by three equally excited children. And the cat, on seeing him, its cosmogony disrupted to such an extent that it felt itself no longer able to distinguish friend from foe, tried to turn back with the result that its first pursuer fell over it. There was the added result that the next two pursuers tripped upon the sprawling form of the first. And Thomas Cathcart Blake had great difficulty in preventing himself from joining the sprawling parade that tumbled past him to the foot of the stairs, and lay at the bottom, a heap of tossing legs and arms and ribbons and fur.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE CHILD AND THE STRANGER.

It is of necessity that a story such as this should be episodical, lapsical, disconnected. Its inception lies in two countries, and of different people. And it is, in its beginnings, a story of contrasts. So one may be permitted again to say: At a time when pompous, ponderous, white-whiskered, black-suited old Dr. DeLancey was engaged in bringing to the daughter of Kathryn Blair a posthumous baby brother that, in the mystery of things, turned out after all to be a sister, a stranger chanced to be riding at dusk through the deep shades of the Bois du Nord, in Brittany. The path was overhung with spreading boughs; it was tumbled with the wood-litter of a decade. His horse went slowly, lifting each forefoot daintily and placing it carefully. And the stranger permitted the animal to take its own time.

At length he came to a turning. The huge bole of a great oak was at his left. He rounded it. His horse raised its head, nostrils distended, eyes alert, and stopped.

The stranger looked up. It was a strange picture that met his eyes....

At first he did not believe that that which he saw was human. It seemed like some nymph of the wood; for there are nymphs in the Bois du Nord, you know, many of them. Anyone who lives there will tell you that.

But then his eyes fell upon a tumbled heap of clothing; and he knew that it was not a nymph, after all. For nymphs do not wear clothing.

There was a little woodland pool before him. The sun, straining through the great, heavy-leafed boughs, specked it with blots and blotches of gold. Beside it there sat the figure of a girl, naked. She sat there, her slender legs beneath her, her slender body leaning upon one rounded, white arm. Great ma.s.ses of dead-black hair fell about her glowing shoulders, half covering the arm which supported her. Her other hand clasped her knee. Her dark eyes were gazing before her toward the trunk of the oak. The stranger felt that she knew that he was there; and yet she had not looked at him.

On the bole of the oak was a squirrel. It was motionless, as though carved out of the trunk itself. Beneath it lay coiled a snake. Its eyes were fastened upon those of the squirrel and its flat, ugly head was moving gently to and fro--to and fro--the while its forked tongue played back and forth between its fangs.

They waited there, the stranger and the naked girl. They waited for a long, long time....

By and by the squirrel moved a little. One forefoot crept slowly down the bark of the oak--and then the other--the one hind foot--and then its mate.... And the squirrel was nearer to the snake.

Again they waited, the stranger and the naked girl.... The squirrel crept yet further down the trunk, toward the slow-shifting venomous head....

The horse snorted.... The squirrel raised its head; and darted up the tree trunk. It was gone. And the snake slid noiselessly off into the underbrush.... The naked girl turned dark, deep eyes upon the stranger.

She seemed not to mind her nakedness. And to him it seemed not strange that she should not. The horror of it all was deep within him. He murmured, beneath his breath:

"Good G.o.d!"

Then he spoke to her, a muttered word, a meaningless word. She swung her body over, sinuously, so that she faced him, slender legs half stretched.

The dead black hair rippled over budding b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She did not answer. She merely looked at him.

The stranger sat there. His eyes blinked a little; he brushed his hand across them, weakly. Then he looked at her again.

Came a sudden rustling in the brush, beside him. His horse leaped forward, almost unseating him.... He had gone far down the trail before he reined it in. Then he crossed himself. His eyes showed that he was frightened.

There was a turning in the path, a turning that led to the main road. The stranger swung his horse into this turning. He knew that it added to the length of his journey by a good league and a half. And yet he took that turning.

And, later, as he turned into the travelled road, he breathed a deep, deep sigh; and again he crossed himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER FIVE.

AS TIME Pa.s.sES.

Time pa.s.sed on over the heads of young Jack Schuyler and young Tom Blake and the daughter of Jimmy Blair. They grew in stature, and in intellect.

They grew through the grades of school that lie between nine and fifteen; and then they separated to go to boarding school.

Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake went to one; the daughter of Jimmy Blair and Kathryn Blair to another. And the baby brother that had turned out to be a sister, and who had been named Elinor, stayed at home with the widow of Jimmy Blair; and the widow of Jimmy Blair was now hardly as lonely as were the parents of Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake.

John Stuyvesant Schuyler had built for himself a place at Larchmont, on the Sound. "Grey Rocks," he called it. It was a long, low rambling house, built of stone and of darkened wood. It sat ensconced in a deep phalanx of great, green trees at the head of a great, green lawn. It was not a big house, of pretension, of arrogant wealth, of many servants--of closely-shaven shrubbery and woodeny landscape gardening. It was, rather, a house that was a home--and there is a distinction--a vast distinction; for there is many a house that is not a home even as there is many a home that is not a house.

Thomas Cathcart Blake built for himself another house, next to it. That also was a rambling, homelike place, with broad halls and deep windows, and wide doors. And the doors he kept open most of the time; for he liked good people, and good people liked him. His big yacht lay during most of the summer a quarter of a mile from the end of his pier. He lived on it part of the time, with Mrs. Thomas Cathcart Blake, and their guests; part of the time he lived on the sh.o.r.e, in the house that he had built. Dr.

DeLancey once asked him if he ever moved the yacht from its moorings, and wanted to bet that the sail covers were stuffed with hay. Thomas Cathcart Blake grinned and said that, as for taking the yacht out to sea, he was afraid of getting it wet; and he wouldn't want to bet as to what the sail covers were stuffed with because it might be excelsior, or cotton, or any one of a number of things.

They always had much company at "The Lawns," which was the name of the house, and on the "Idlesse," which was the name of the yacht that seldom sailed; although Dr. DeLancey begged them to rechristen it "The Dock," or "The Stake Boat," or something of the sort, which he thought would be much more appropriate. And among this company, was a great deal, the widow of Jimmy Blair, and her daughter.

Young Jack Schuyler and young Tom Blake got home from college that year about the middle of June. Kathryn Blair was a few days later, owing to certain nonacademic festivities which she didn't want to miss. You can know, how popular and attractive and altogether charming she was when I tell you that she was like her mother at her age; and all New York knows how hard it was even for Jimmy Blair--and there have been very few Jimmy Blairs, you know--to make any perceptible progress amid the choking ma.s.ses of his competing fellows.

Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake went down to the train, in a trap, to meet her. They hardly recognized the girl with whom they had pillow-fought and leopard-stalked in the dainty figure that descended from the dusty train.

A year, with a girl of eighteen, means vast changes; and when that year has been spent at boarding school, it means changes yet more vast, infinitely. Thus, it was that Jack Schuyler and Tom Blake stood, jaws agape, eyes wide-open, and stared--frankly, unequivocally stared.... Then they went to meet her; and both tried to shake hands at once; then both tried to pick up her travelling case at once; and they b.u.mped their heads.

For the first half mile of the drive to the sh.o.r.e, they sat dumb, thinking with sore strainings of mind for things to say, and rejecting each because it didn't seem to be good enough. Finally Tom Blake ventured a remark anent the weather. No harm came to him. So Jack Schuyler ventured one about the wind. He also went scatheless.

At length Tom Blake, looking at the fresh, clean beauty of the girl on the other seat, forgot himself, and voiced, in the moment of his temporary aberration, that which was in the two adolescent male minds.

"Doggone, but you've grown pretty, Kate!" and then blushed.

She blushed, too, and looked at Jack Schuyler. At which he blushed and almost carromed the trap against a telegraph pole. Whereat they all laughed. And from then on, they were themselves.

They were met by her mother at "The Lawns," and by Dr. DeLancey. Dr.

DeLancey was not bashful. He pinched her glowing cheek and looked her over, critically.

"A positive symposium of pulchritude," he declared. "I wish I were fifty or seventy-five years younger, by Jove! If you two boys let any rank outsider take her out of the family, you'll have me to reckon with. Yes, by Jove, you will! And you'll find that while I may be a poor fencer, and a worse boxer, I'm still a good spanker!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER SIX.

AN ACCIDENT.