“Louis agrees with you about this improvement business.  He’s dead against my building Rhine-castle ruins on the crags, and he had the impudence to inform me that I had a cheap mind.  By God, Hamil, I can’t see anything cheap in trying to spend a quarter of a million in decorating this infernal monotony of trees; can you?”

And Hamil, for the first time in many a day, lay back in his arm-chair and laughed with all his heart.

He had hard work in weaning Portlaw from his Rhine castles, for the other invariably met his objections by quoting in awful German: 

    “Hast du das Schloss gesehen—­
    Das hohe Schloss am Meer?”

—­pronounced precisely as though the words were English.  Which laudable effort toward intellectual and artistic uplift Hamil never laughed at; and there ensued always the most astonishing causerie concerning art that two men in a wilderness ever engaged in.

Young Hastings, a Yale academic and forestry graduate, did fairly well in Malcourt’s place, and was doing better every day.  For one thing he knew much more about practical forestry and the fish and game problems than did Malcourt, who was a better organiser than executive.

He began by dumping out into a worthless and landlocked bass-pond every brown trout in the hatchery.  He then drew off the water in the brown-trout ponds, sent in men with seines and shotguns, and finally, with dynamite, purged the free waters of the brown danger for good and all.

“When Malcourt comes back,” observed Portlaw, “you’ll have to answer for all this.”

“I won’t be questioned,” said Hastings, smiling.

“Oh!  And what do you propose to do next?”

“If I had the money you think of spending on ruined castles “—­very respectfully—­“I’d build a wall in place of that mesh-wire fence.”

“Why?” asked Portlaw.

“The wire deceives the grouse when they come driving headlong through the woods.  My men pick up dozens of dead grouse and woodcock along the fence.  If it were a wall they’d go over it.  As it is, if I had my way, I’d restock with Western ruffed-grouse; cut out that pheasantry altogether, and try to breed our own native game-bird—­”

“What!  You can’t breed ruffed-grouse in captivity!”

“I’ve done it, sir,” said young Hastings modestly.

That night, over the plans, Portlaw voiced his distrust of Hastings and mourned aloud for Malcourt.

“That infernal Louis,” he complained, waving his fat cigar, “hasn’t written one line to me in a week!  What the deuce is he doing down there in town?  I won’t stand it!  The ice is out and Wayward and Cuyp and Vetchen are coming up for the fishing; and Mrs. Ascott, perhaps, is coming, and Miss Palliser, and, I hope, Miss Suydam; that makes our eight for Bridge, you see, with you and me.  If Louis were here I’d have three others—­but I can’t ask anybody else until I know.”