Dollar played a while with a queer plain steel ruler, out of keeping with his other possessions, though it too had its history. It stood on end before he let it alone and looked up.
"General Dysone, there must be some sort of reason or foundation for all this. Has anything alarming happened since you have been at—Valsugana?"
"Nothing that firearms could prevent"
"Do you mind telling me what it is that has happened?"
"We had a tragedy in the winter—a suicide on the place."
"Ah!"
"Her gardener hanged himself. Hers, I say, because the garden is my wife's affair. I only paid the poor fellow his wages."
"Well, come, General, that was enough to depress anybody——"
"Yet she wouldn't have even that tree cut down—nor yet come away for a change—not for as much as a night in town!"
The interruption had come with another access of grim heat and further use of the General's handkerchief. Dollar took up his steel tube of a ruler and trained it like a spy-glass on the ink, with one eye as carefully closed as if the truth lay at the bottom of the blue-black well.