Part 21

"Wait!" groaned the Major--"wait!" and he toddled into the hall and fell on a chair, beating space with his pudgy hands.

When the Colonel at length learned the nature of the threatened calamity, he utterly refused to credit it.

"Rubbish!" he said, calmly--"rubbish! my dear fellow; this man Munn is holding out for more money, d'ye see? Rubbish! rubbish! It's blackmail, d'ye see?"

"Do you think so?" faltered the Major, hopefully. "It isn't possible that they mean to come, is it? Fancy all those fanatics shouting about under our windows--"

"Rubbish!" said the Colonel, calmly. "I'll write to the fellow myself."

All through that rainy month of May the two old cronies had the club-house to themselves; they slopped about together, fishing cheek by jowl as they had fished for thirty years; at night they sat late over their toddy, and disputed and bickered and wagged their fingers at each other, and went to bed with the perfect gravity of gentlemen who could hold their own with any toddy ever brewed.

No reply came to the Colonel, but that did not discourage him.

"They are playing a waiting game," he said, sagely. "This man Munn has bought the land from O'Hara's daughter for a song, and he means to bleed us. I'll write to Sprowl; he'll fix things."

Early in June Dr. Lansing and his young kinsman, De Witt Coursay, arrived at the club-house. They, also, were of the opinion that Munn's object was to squeeze the club by threats.

The second week in June, Peyster Sprowl, Master of Fox-hounds, Shadowbrook, appeared with his wife, the celebrated beauty, Agatha Sprowl, née Van Guilder.

Sprowl, now immensely large and fat, had few cares in life beyond an anxious apprehension concerning the durability of his own digestion. However, he was still able to make a midnight mouthful of a Welsh rarebit on a hot mince-pie, and wash it down with a quart of champagne, and so the world went very well with him, even if it wabbled a trifle for his handsome wife.

"She's lovely enough," said Colonel Hyssop, gallantly, "to set every star in heaven wabbling." To which the bull-necked Major assented with an ever-hopeless attempt to bend at the waistband.

Meanwhile the Rev. Amasa Munn and his flock, the Shining Band, arrived at Foxville in six farm wagons, singing "Roll, Jordan!"

Of their arrival Sprowl was totally unconscious, the Colonel having forgotten to inform him of the threatened invasion.

The members of the Sagamore Club heard the news next morning at a late breakfast. Major Brent, who had been fishing early up-stream, bore the news, and delivered it in an incoherent bellow.

"What d'ye mean by that?" demanded Colonel Hyssop, setting down his cocktail with unsteady fingers.

"Mean?" roared the Major; "I mean that Munn and a lot o' women are sitting on the river-bank and singing 'Home Again'!"

The news jarred everybody, but the effect of it upon the president, Peyster Sprowl, appeared to be out of all proportion to its gravity. That gentleman's face was white as death; and the Major noticed it.

"You'll have to rid us of this mob," said the Major, slowly.

Sprowl lifted his heavy, overfed face from his plate. "I'll attend to it," he said, hoarsely, and swallowed a pint of claret.

"I think it is amusing," said Agatha Sprowl, looking across the table at Coursay.

"Amusing, madam!" burst out the Major. "They'll be doing their laundry in our river next!"

"Soapsuds in my favorite pools!" bawled the Colonel. "Damme if I'll permit it!"

"Sprowl ought to settle them," said Lansing, good-naturedly. "It may cost us a few thousands, but Sprowl will do the work this time as he did it before."

Sprowl choked in his claret, turned a vivid beef-color, and wiped his chin. His appetite was ruined. He hoped the ruin would stop there.

"What harm will they do?" asked Coursay, seriously--"beyond the soapsuds?"

"They'll fish, they'll throw tin cans in the water, they'll keep us awake with their fanatical powwows--confound it, haven't I seen that sort of thing?" said the Major, passionately. "Yes, I have, at nigger camp-meetings! And these people beat the niggers at that sort of thing!"

"Leave 'em to me," repeated Peyster Sprowl, thickly, and began on another chop from force of habit.