“We’ll never live here, if I can help it,” answered Max.  “As for the pine grove, the best thing to do with that is to cut it down and get the money out of it.”

“Max!” exclaimed Josephine.  “Don’t do that without the permission of every member of your family and most of your friends.  What’s the money?”

“The money’s a good deal to me.  This illness of Sally’s—­”

“Sell the books, if you must, but not the trees.  Of course you ought to keep both, but don’t—­don’t cut down those trees!”

“You’re as bad as Sally about this old place.  Hello, there’s some one in the grove now!  What’s he doing?  Standing on his head?”

For a leg could be descried waving in the air, while its owner apparently lay partly on his back, his shoulders against a tree trunk.  As the trap came nearer, the man could be seen distinctly; he was reading, with one leg balancing across the knee of the other.

“Seems to have taken possession of my grounds.  I suppose he also would object if I offered to cut down the grove.  Is he going to see us?  No—­too absorbed in his yellow novel.”

“He sees us.  But we’re nothing to him.  He’s turned back to his page.  Shall we drive in?  Are you going to get out?”

“Yes, of course, if only to show that chap I’m the owner of his lounging place.”

Josephine turned in, and the trap swung through the gateway and on past the pine grove.  Max saw the reader get to his feet.

“Coming to apologize,” murmured Max.  “Well, if he asks permission, he can stay—­till I cut down the grove.”

Before the horse had been tied, the stranger was at hand.  “Since I’m caught in the act, I’ll come and ask if I may,” he said, genially.  “This is Mr. Lane, I believe.  I’m Donald Ferry, a neighbour of yours.  Your fine grove is a sort of ‘call of the wild’ to me.”

Max shook hands, attracted at once by both voice and face.  Donald Ferry was a sturdy young man, with broad shoulders and a thick thatch of reddish-brown hair; he possessed a pair of searching but friendly hazel eyes.  He was dressed in a rough suit of blue serge, and a gray flannel shirt with a rolling collar and flowing blue tie gave him an out-door air confirmed by the tan and freckles on his face and the sinewy grip of his brown hand.  He had closed his book and tucked it under his arm, so that its title could not be observed, but it had not exactly the look of a “yellow novel.”

“You’re entirely welcome to make use of the grove as much as you like,” Max answered, with the cordiality he could not help feeling toward the possessor of so frank and genial a look as that with which the strange young man continued to regard him.

“I live with my mother in the little house on the other side of the grove,” explained Mr. Ferry.  “We’ve been living there for a fortnight, but this is the first time I’ve caught sight of anybody about the place.  It seemed so completely deserted I’ve been proposing to my mother that we appropriate the house.  But she seems a trifle appalled by the size of it.  On the whole, for us, ours is rather the better fit.”