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a hundred-odd years had squatted on a low hill above the river. Its outbuildings were clustered around the big house like the chicks about some protecting hen.
Pollard himself came out to greet us. "Why, you boys have grown up!" was his first exclamation. "Here I've remembered you as Hughie and Art, the campus trouble-raisers, and you look as though you belong to business clubs and talk everlastingly about sales-resistance!"
"That's the sobering effect of commercial life," Dutton explained, grinning. "It hasn't touched you, you old oyster--you look the same as you did five years ago."
He did, too, his lanky figure and slow smile and curiously thoughtful eyes having changed not a jot. Yet Pollard's bearing seemed to show some rather more than usual excitement and I commented on it.
"If I seem a little excited it's because this is a great day for me," he answered.
"Well, you are in luck to get two fine fellows like Dutton and me to trail up to this hermitage of yours," I began, but he shook his head smilingly.
"I don't refer to that. Art, though I'm mighty glad you've come. As for my hermitage, as you call it, don't say a word against it. I've been able to do work here I could never have done amid the distractions of a city laboratory."
His eyes were alight. "If you two knew what--but there, you'll hear it soon enough. Let's get inside--I suppose you're hungry?"
"Hungry--not I," I assured him. "I might devour half a steer or some trifle like that, but I have really no appetite for anything else today."
"Same here," Dutton said. "I just pick at my food lately. Give me a few dozen sandwiches and a bucket of coffee and I consider it a full meal."
"Well, we'll see what we can do to tempt your delicate appetites," said Pollard, as we went inside.
We found his big house comfortable enough, with long, low-ceilinged rooms and broad windows looking riverward. After putting our bags in a bedroom, and while his housekeeper and cook prepared dinner. P