If you are equally discreet--able to be deaf when troublesome questions are asked, then I think we shall get on." "You should remember--" began Oscar.
"I remember nothing," observed Armitage sharply; and Oscar was quite humble again.

Armitage opened a trunk and took out an envelope from which he drew several papers and a small map, which he unfolded and spread on the table.

He marked a spot with his lead-pencil and passed the map to Oscar.
"Do you think you could find that place ?" The man breathed hard over it for several minutes.
"Yes; it would be easy," and he nodded his head several times as he named the railroad stations nearest the point indicated by Armitage.

The place was in one of the mountainous counties of Virginia, fifteen miles from an east and west railway line.

Armitage opened a duly recorded deed which conveyed to himself the title to two thousand acres of land; also a curiously complicated abstract of title showing the successive transfers of ownership from colonial days down through the years of Virginia's splendor to the dread time when battle shook the world.