A Dream of Empire

ed to leave the premises. Before starting, he beckoned the gardener, who sulkily responded to the sign. The pertinacious visitor was proof against repulse. No social coolness could chill his confiding ardor. He took Peter's arm, and with a backward jerk of the head declared interrogatively:

"The Mogul is sort of queer, isn't he? A screw loose somewhere, eh?"

"Well," responded Peter cautiously, "yes and no; he is queer and he isn't queer. He has plenty of book learning and plenty of money, and a fool can't get much of either. Folks say he has every kind of sense but common sense."

"At first he didn't want to be sociable. I asked him a civil question about a public matter, and he shut up like a clam. Now can you tell me, as man to man, why the deuce that hunk of beef is put to soak in that puddle, up at the head of the island?"

Peter chuckled in the contemptuous manner of a practical man, without sympathy for speculative genius.

"That's one of his chemical experiments