"
"I've tackled your liquids," said Van Dyke. "You are likely to see me
'most any day. I'm always rattling 'round somewhere, don't you know."
(He said "rettling," by the way.) The car was waiting at the back of
the house. O'Dowd walked out with Barnes, their arms linked,--as on a
former occasion, Barnes recalled.
"I'll ride out to the gate with you," said the Irishman. "It's a
winding, devious route the road takes through the trees. As the crow
flies it's no more than five hundred yards, but this way it can't be
less than a mile and a half. Eh, Peter?"
Peter opined that it was at least a mile and a quarter. He was a
Yankee, as O'Dowd had said, and he was not extravagant in estimates.
The passengers sat in the rear seat. Two small lamps served to light
the way through the Stygian labyrinth of trees and rocks. O'Dowd had
an electric pocket torch with which to pick his way back to Green
Fancy.
"I can't, for the life of me, see why he doesn't put in a driveway
straight to the road beyond, instead of roaming all over creation as
we have to do," said O'Dowd.
"We foller the bed of the crick that used to run through here 'fore it
was dammed a little ways up to make the ice-pond 'tween here an'
Spanish Falls," supplied Peter.
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