Produced by Al Haines
By JOHN BUCHAN
The POWER-HOUSE
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY * BOSTON The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
TO
MAJOR-GENERAL
SIR FRANCIS LLOYD, K.C.B.
_MY DEAR GENERAL:_
_A recent tale of mine has, I am told, found favour in the dug-outs and billets of the British front, as being sufficiently short and sufficiently exciting for men who have little leisure to read. My friends in that uneasy region have asked for more. So I have printed this story, written in the smooth days before the war, in the hope that it may enable an honest man here and there to forget for an hour the too urgent realities. I have put your name on it, because among the many tastes which we share one is a liking for precipitous yarns._
_J.B._
CONTENTS
Preface by the Editor
CHAPTER
I. Beginning of the Wild-Goose Chase II. I First Hear of Mr. Andrew Lumley III. Tells of a Midsummer Night IV. I Follow the Trail of the Super-Butler V. I Take a Partner VI. The Restaurant in Antioch Street VII. I Find Sanctuary VIII. The Power-House IX. Return of the Wild Geese
PREFACE BY THE EDITOR
We were at Glenaicill--six of us--for the duck-shooting, when Leithen told us this story. Since five in the morning we had been out on the skerries, and had been blown home by a wind which threatened to root the house and its wind-blown woods from their precarious lodgment on the hill. A vast nondescript meal, luncheon and dinner in one, had occupied us till the last daylight departed, and we settled ourselves in the smoking-room for a sleepy evening of talk and tobacco.