Now, too, came the crowning opportunity of sylvan
sport. There were deer to stalk and to course with horses, hounds, and
horns; wild turkeys and mountain grouse to try the aim and tax the
pedestrianism of the hunter; bears had not yet gone into winter quarters,
and were mast-fed and fat; even a shot at a wolf, slyly marauding, was no
infrequent incident, and Edward Briscoe thought the place in autumn an
elysium for a sportsman.
He had to-day the prospect of a comrade in these delights from his own
city home and of his own rank in life, despite the desertion of the big
frame hotel on the bluff, but it was not the enticement of rod and gun
that had brought Julian Bayne suddenly and unexpectedly to the mountains.
His host and cousin, Edward Briscoe, was his co-executor in a kinsman's
will, and in the settlement of the estate the policy of granting a
certain power of attorney necessitated a conference more confidential
than could be safely compassed by correspondence. They discussed this as
they sat in the spacious reception hall, and had Bayne been less
preoccupied he must have noticed at once the embarrassment, nay, the look
of absolute dismay, with which Briscoe had risen to receive him, when,
unannounced, he appeared in the doorway as abruptly as if he had fallen
from the clouds.
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