The Brown Study

by Grace S. Richmond

Coats over their arms, the two young men swung away upon the trail—a wide, much-used trail, which could be followed without difficulty. The warm summer air was fragrant with the scent of balsam, pine, and fern; pine needles carpeted the path; faint forest sounds came to their ears—the call of a loon from a distant lake, the whirr of a partridge, the chatter of a squirrel, the splash of falling water. Waldron took off his straw hat and tucked it under his arm, baring his forehead to the spice-laden breeze that now and then filtered through the forest, stirring languid leaves to motion.

"Ah, but I'd like to be just setting out on a fortnight of this!" he breathed. "Dressed for the part, a pack on my back—or a canoe. When I was a boy I used to go on long canoeing trips, following our river to its mouth. I don't like the tropics as well as I do the temperate zones."

"If you weren't such a tremendous grind you would do it now," Julius offered. "A fellow needs a vacation, now and then, if he's to keep in shape."

Waldron glanced at him, smiling. "So he does. But somehow I've managed to keep in shape. I inherit from my father a fairly tough constitution, and also the love of work, the seeing my job through to the finish without loss of time. I suspect that's what keeps me going."

They fell into talk about Waldron's work.

In answer to Julius's questions Waldron told him a good deal about the work itself—little, as Julius afterward realized, of his own part in it. The miles fell away beneath their steadily marching feet, and in due season, by Julius's management, they emerged from the trail at a certain rocky bluff overlooking the distant country, upon which was perched the small but county-famous inn where they were to have dinner.

A string of automobiles stood along the driveway, and among them Julius readily recognized the three with which he was familiar as those which had been conveying the Clifford-Jordan bridal party to and from its places of entertainment for the last fortnight. No sign of the party itself was to be seen upon the side piazzas which encompassed the inn. But this was easily understood. From some distance away the sounds proceeding from a shrubbery-screened point upon the bluff before the inn betrayed the presence of a company of revellers. This was as it should be. Even Julius Broughton's audacity was not to be carried to the point of forcing himself and his friend, uninvited, upon a set of young people already carefully selected and for the time being rigidly separated from the rest of mankind by metaphorical white ribbons stretched to insure privacy.

Julius left Waldron upon the porch and went into the inn to ascertain, if might be, from the management where the bridal party would be dining. Learning, as he had expected, that a private apartment was devoted to their use, he went to the public dining room and selected a table. Being early he was able to secure one in an alcove, looking out through an open window upon the path along which the bridal party, returning from the bluff, would be sure to approach. To this he presently led Waldron and seated him so that he faced the path outside, the vista of distant countryside beyond. The young people of the Clifford-Jordan party were to dine at eight, and it lacked only a few minutes of this hour when they appeared down the path.

Julius had just given his order and leaned comfortably back in his chair when he caught sight of them. "By George!" he ejaculated. "Well, well! so this is where they've come! Been mighty mysterious about where they meant to spend the day, but we've caught 'em. Started in the opposite direction this morning, too—just for a blind. You see there are a lot of practical jokers among Clifford's friends, and their attentions haven't been confined to the hour of the wedding itself. I say, recognize the girl in the lead with the bride's brother, that light-haired fellow?"

Drawing back so that he was concealed by the curtains of the window Waldron looked out at the approaching bevy of young people. Up the path they came, talking, laughing, shifting like a pattern in a kaleidoscope, gay, handsome, sophisticated, modishly dressed, unconventionally mannered, yet showing, most of them, the traces of that youthful ennui so often betrayed in these modern days by those who of all the world should feel it least.