strap from his neck, and went up to the big hotel at the end of the lake.
A group of girls in a summer house running out over the water furnished Frank with his first customers. He sold two friendship rings and sixteen postal cards.
A crowd of idle men took fire on the puzzle proposition, as two men examining the wire devices got rating one another as to their respective ability to get the ring off first. A dozen puzzles were purchased in as many minutes.
Frank went the rounds of the verandas, meeting with very fair success. The people there had plenty of money to spare, time hung rather heavy on their hands, and they welcomed his arrival as a diverson.
Frank grew to have a decided respect for Markham's little puzzle. He had struck the right crowd to sell it to, this time. At the end of an hour fully fifty persons could be seen on the well-lighted verandas and in the hotel rotunda, working over the clever puzzle. An occasional utterance of satisfaction would greet the solution of the puzzle.
"Markham has certainly left me a money-winner, If he never came back," reflected Frank.
He was passing along a lighted walk near the
