Briscoe a suggestion that they should repair to the vacant hotel for a
tramp on its piazzas, for it was the habit of the two ladies in rainy or
misty weather to utilize these long, sheltered stretches for exercise,
and many an hour they walked, on dreary days, in these deserted
precincts.
"I'll overtake you," was Mrs. Briscoe's rejoinder, and until then Lillian
had not noticed the employ of her hostess. The gardener was engaged in
the removal of the more delicate ornamental growths about the
porte-cochere and parterre to the shelter of the flower-pit, for bright
chill weather and killing frosts would ensue on the dispersal of the
mists. Mrs. Briscoe herself was intent on withdrawing certain hardier
potted plants merely from the verge of the veranda to a wire-stand well
under the roof. Briscoe was at the gun-rack in the hall, restoring to its
place the favorite rifle he had intended to use to-day. He could not
refrain from testing its perfect mechanism, and at the first sharp crack
of the hammer, liberated by a tentative pull on the trigger, little
Archie sprang up from his play on the hearth-rug, where he was harnessing
a toy horse to Mrs.
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