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134 lamp and sat down. "He's far from being asleep."

"Too much Slavic music, perhaps," said Elspeth; "it seems to have made a profound impression."

"How do you like our friend on further acquaintance?" Joan inquired. Jim filled his pipe and reached for the matches.

"Much more, for the sake of his heavenly music," he replied, "and much less, for his behaviour to Garth. That bow was an insult. I could have knocked him down."

"He does play divinely," Joan mused.

"Yes," Jim agreed, "but even Germans do that. What did he talk to you about all the time he was marathoning up that hill?"

"Oh, very interesting things; about his home in Russia," Joan answered. "It appears that he has a great, old, gaunt, ancestral place, and in the winter he and a few faithful servitors go wolf-hunting on the steppe. They do squat- dances around the camp-fire in the evening and play the balalaika."

"What an idyllic scene!" said Jim. "If we did but know it, he probably lived in a back apartment in Petrograd. By the way, it's