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"I was quite sure I saw Walter Monohan board a train while we were waiting for the hotel car in Hopyard. I heard that he was in timber out here. Is he this Monohan?" Fyfe nodded. "How odd," she remarked, "that you should be in the same region. Do you still maintain the ancient feud?" Fyfe shot her a queer look. "We've grown up, Dolly," he said drily.
You stick with me, Sis, and you'll wear diamonds." She laughed with him at this, and leaving the shady maple they walked up to the hotel, where Benton proposed that they get a canoe and paddle to where Roaring River flowed out of the lake half a mile westward, to kill the time that must elapse before the three-thirty train. The St. Allwoods' car was rolling out to Hopyard when they came back.
To her, fresh from trim farmsteads and rural communities that began setting their houses in order when Washington wintered at Valley Forge, Hopyard stood forth sordid and unkempt. And as happens to many a one in like case, a wave of sickening loneliness engulfed her, and she eyed the speeding Limited as one eyes a departing friend. "How could one live in a place like this?" she asked herself.
When she had settled back with bag and suitcase locked and strapped on the opposite seat and was hatted and gloved, he leaned over and addressed her genially. "Getting off at Hopyard? Happen to be going out to Roaring Springs?"
In the waters beside and lining the beach floated innumerable logs, confined by boomsticks, hundreds of trunks of fir, forty and sixty feet long, four and six feet across the butt, timber enough, when it had passed through the sawmills, to build four such towns as Hopyard. Just back from the shore, amid stumps and littered branches, rose the roofs of divers buildings. One was long and low.
Here the afternoon wind sprang up, shooting gustily through a gap between the Springs and Hopyard and ruffling the lake out of its noonday siesta. Ripples, chop, and a growing swell followed each other with that marvellous rapidity common to large bodies of fresh water. It broke the monotony of steady cleaving through dead calm.
But she had neither Slave of the Lamp at her beck, nor any Magic Carpet to transport her elsewhere. At any rate, she reflected, Hopyard was not her abiding-place. She hoped that her destination would prove more inviting. Beside the platform were ranged two touring cars. Three or four of those who had alighted entered these. Their baggage was piled over the hoods, buckled on the running boards.
The veiled lady was responsible.... She had me kidnapped and carried out into these infernal hills, wherever they are.... Never saw them before.... Looks as if a cyclone hit them.... One can pick up enough shells and scrap iron to stock a foundry.... The trees are all shot off nothing but stumps and slivered trees and broken wheels and boxes littered around.... Looks like SOME FIGHT had taken place in this strong-smelling hopyard among these hummocks.... Apparently the hogs have been rooting up the ground all around here.... There isn't a sign of a living thing in sight ... and not a drop of water to be had!... WHO was that woman?... The Baroness, who?... Must find out more about Syvorotka."
"All right." She dressed herself, took the elevator down to the lobby, instructed the night clerk to have a maid pack her trunk and send it by express to Hopyard, care of St. Allwoods Hotel on the lake. Then she walked out to the broad-stepped carriage entrance. A low-hung long-hooded, yellow car stood there, exhaust purring faintly.
Within a few minutes the porter came for her things, and the blast of the Limited's whistle warned her that it was time to leave the train. Ten minutes later the Limited was a vanishing object down an aisle slashed through a forest of great trees, and Miss Estella Benton stood on the plank platform of Hopyard station. Northward stretched a flat, unlovely vista of fire-blackened stumps.
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