"Train? Of course not!" laughed the irrepressible stranger. "I've been laid up in the house with malaria since I wrote Marcy. But you're you, Philip Touchtone; and you are Gerald Saxton; and I am myself, Frederick Hilliard, the only and actual, at your service. If any body has been playing me, he's some oddity—doing a poor copy of an indifferent original. My dear boy, you stare at me as if I were a ghost!"
A cloud was eddying in Philip's head. Not till afterward did he think how droll his question must have sounded. But he asked, very solemnly, "Has there—been a fire—in this building?"
"A fire? In such a hot September as this!" chuckled the merry gentleman. "Bless your heart, my dear fellow, nowhere but in the kitchen, I trust! Does the hall strike you as damp? Don't know but what it is. Bring those things up-stairs, George," he added to his own servant, who appeared from above. "Follow me, boys. My rooms are on the second floor. How did you leave Miss Beauchamp? and how are Mr. Fisher and old General Sawtelle and Mr. Lorraine?"
