“He come here last fall, that is, to stay. But for weeks before that he had been sending all sorts of stuff,—wheels, cranks, knives, engines, pieces of machinery and lots of things the like of which I have never saw, and they was carted out into the woods, where he hired some carpenters to put up a big cabin, and a still bigger one that ain’t very high where he stowed his flying machine and other things.”
“And he has made his home there ever since?”
“I ’spose you might say so, though he’s away a good deal; sometimes he’s gone for weeks afore he shows up agin.”
“How long has he been able to fly with his machine?”
“I can’t say for certain, but the first time I seen him was last spring—April, I think—when he sailed over the town and we didn’t see him agin for more’n a week.”
“Where is his shop?”
“You walk down the main street to the second turn, then foller a road that ain’t much traveled, for about a quarter of a mile; then you turn to the left over a hunter’s trail that has been there ever since any one can remember, and keep along that till you run aginst his cabin.”
The young woman, who announced that her name was Ann Harbor, illustrated her explanations by so many gestures that her listener was sure he could readily trace the eccentric inventor to his retreat.
“You say he ate dinner at your hotel to-day?”
“Yes.”