"
The afternoon was gone before they could have believed it, detours
though there were several, as there usually are in a road-mending
season. As the car emerged from a long run through wooded country and
passed a certain landmark carefully watched for by Red Pepper, he spoke
to Aleck.
"Run slowly now, please. And be ready to turn to the left at a point
that doesn't show much beforehand."
They were proceeding through somewhat sparsely settled country, though
marked here and there by comfortable farmhouses of a more than
ordinarily attractive type--apparently homes of prosperous people with
an eye to appearances. Then quite suddenly the car, rounding a turn,
came into a different region, one of cultivated wildness, of studied
effects so cleverly disguised that they would seem to the unobservant
only the efforts of nature at her best. A long, heavily shaded avenue of
oaks, with high, untrimmed hedges of shrubbery on each side, curved
enticingly before them, and all at once, Burns, looking sharply ahead,
called, "There, by that big pine, Aleck--to the left." In a minute more
the car turned in at a point where a rough stone gateway marked the
entrance to nothing more extraordinary than a pleasant wood.
"Patient lives in a hut in the forest?" King inquired with interest.
"Or a rich man's hunting lodge?"
"You'll soon see." Burns's eyes were ahead; a slight smile touched his
lips.
The car swept around curve after curve of the wood, came out upon the
shore of a small lake and, skirting it halfway round, plunged into a
grove of pines.
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