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To the wild, out-of-the-world hunting lodge in the Adirondack wilderness of tree and lake and trout-haunted mountain stream which had been part of Norman Westfall's heritage, came, one twilight of cloud and wind, Diane, tanned with the wind and sun of a year's wandering and very tired.
Turning sharp round, I beheld a very ancient man in a smock frock, who carried a basket on one arm, and leaned upon a stick. "Yes," I answered; "I was wondering how it came to be built in such an out-of-the-world spot." "Why, 't were built by a wanderin' man o' the roads." "It's very lonely!" said I. "Ye may well say so, sir haunted it be, tu." "Haunted?" said I.
"My boy," he said, "of all the God-forsaken, out-of-the-world, benighted holes, this Bildborough of yours absolutely takes the cake! For sheer ignorance for sheer, thick-headed, bumptious, arrogant ignorance give me your farmers!" "What's wrong?" I asked him. "Wrong? Listen!" he exclaimed, almost dramatically.
No other habitation was within a mile of it, and its solitary position was quite enough by itself to suggest to any one that a man who had made money across the "drink" as I heard an American once irreverently style the Atlantic would scarcely be likely to stay for any considerable time in such an out-of-the-world spot.
His official reports, in a quaint, stately hand, were models of English; full of information, intelligent, valuable, well observed. And those few of his countrymen, who stumbled upon him in the out-of-the-world places to which of late he had been banished, wrote of him to the department in terms of admiration and awe.
Once Diane herself had unlocked the desk and peered timidly within. She remembered now the faultless order of the few dry, uninteresting papers, an ink well made of the skull of a tiny monkey, a bamboo pen, a half-finished manuscript of wild adventure in some out-of-the-world spot in the South Pacific. There had been nothing more. But the desk was one of intricate drawers and panels.
As to the painter, the whole letter so caught his capricious fancy that he was for ever questioning Jan as to the details of his life in that out-of-the-world district where the purest breath of heaven turned the sails of the windmill, and where the miller took payment for his work "in kind."
It was clear, they thought in their out-of-the-world way, that the enemy would be speedily overrun; that the New Zealand troops were only untrained, untried colonials; that they could therefore expect no more than garrison duty; and that every available Imperial soldier would be thrown into the field before the colonial troops were drawn upon.
A sort of depression, of fear almost, came over me when I pictured the two children and myself alone in that strange, out-of-the-world place, where it really seemed to me we might all three be made an end of without any one being the wiser of it!
For, I confess," she went on, turning to the rest of the party, "I confess I feel inordinately curious to see, with my own eyes, what these famous diggings are like. From all one hears, they must be MARVELLOUSLY entertaining. Now, I presume that you, Mr. Smith, never touch at such RUDE, OUT-OF-THE-WORLD places in the course of YOUR travels?"
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