on, the white line of fence clearly outlined beyond him; and then when my hand was almost upon him he rose at the fence, as though sprung from the earth itself, and hung a moment sheer above the sharp line of the fence pickets, his whole figure held almost horizontal, in the fashion of trained high-jumpers, for what seemed an infinite time, as though by some witchery of the moonlight.
I plunged into the fence with a force that knocked the wind out of me and as I clung panting to the pickets the runner dropped with a crash into the midst of a glass vegetable frame on the farther side. He turned his head, grinned at me sheepishly through the pickets, and gave a kick that set the glass to tinkling. Then he held up his hands in sign of surrender and I saw that they were cut and bleeding. We were both badly blown, and while we regained our wind we stared at each other. He was the first to speak.
"Kicked, bit or stung!" he muttered dolefully; "that saddest of all words, 'stung!' It's as clear as moonlight that I'm badly mussed, not to say cut."
"May I trouble you not to kick out any more of that glass? The gardener will be here in a minute and fish you out."
"Lawsy, what is it? An aquarium, that you fish for me?"
He chuckled softly, but sat perfectly quiet, finding, it seemed, a certain humor in his situation. The gardener came running up and swore in broad Scots at the destruction of the frame. We got over the fence and released our captive, who talked to himself in doleful undertones as we hauled him to his feet amid a renewed clink of glass.
"Gently, gentlemen; behold the night-blooming cereus! Not all the court-plaster in the universe can glue me together again." He gazed ruefully at his slashed arms, and rubbed his legs. "The next time I seek the garden at dewy eve I'll wear my tin suit."
"There won't be any next time for you. What did you run for?"
"Trying to lower my record—it's a mania with me. And as one good question deserves another, may I ask why you didn't tell me there was a glass-works beyond that fence? It wasn't sportsmanlike to hide a murderous hazard like that. But I cleared those pickets with a yard to spare, and broke my record."
"You broke about seven yards of glass," I replied. "It may sober you to know that you are under arrest. The watchman here has a constable's license."
"He also has hair that suggests the common garden or boiled carrot. The tint is not to my liking; yet it is not for me to be captious where the Lord has hardened His heart."
"What is your name?" I demanded.
"Gillespie. R. Gillespie. The 'R' will indicate to you the depth of my humility: I make it a life work to hide the fact that I was baptized Reginald."
"I've been expecting you, Mr. Gillespie, and now I want you to come over to my house and give an account of yourself. I will take charge of this man, Andy. I promise that he shan't set foot here again. And, Andy, you need mention this affair to no one."
"Very good, sir."
He touched his hat respectfully.
"I have business with this person. Say nothing to the ladies at St. Agatha's about him."
He saluted and departed; and with Gillespie walking beside me I started for the boat-landing.
He had wrapped a handkerchief about one arm and I gave him my own for the other. His right arm was bleeding freely below the elbow and I tied it up for him.
"That jump deserved better luck," I volunteered, as he accepted my aid in silence.
"I'm proud to have you like it. Will you kindly tell me who the devil you are?"
"My name is Donovan."
"I don't wholly care for it," he observed mournfully. "Think it over and see if you can't do better. I'm not sure that I'm going to grow fond of you. What's your business with me, anyhow?"
"My business, Mr. Gillespie, is to see that you leave this lake by the first and fastest train."
"Is it possible?" he drawled mockingly.
"More than that," I replied in his own key; "it is decidedly probable."
"Meanwhile, it would be diverting to know where you're taking me. I thought the other chap was the constable."
"I'm taking you to the house of a friend where I'm visiting. I'm going to row you in your boat. It's only a short distance; and when we get there I shall have something to say to you."
He made no reply, but got into the boat without ado. He found a light flannel coat and I flung it over his shoulders and pulled for Glenarm pier, telling the Japanese boy to follow with the canoe. I turned over in my mind the few items of information that I had gained from Miss Pat and her niece touching the young man who was now my prisoner, and found that I knew little enough about him. He was the unwelcome and annoying suitor of Miss Helen Holbrook, and I had caught him prowling about St. Agatha's in a manner that was indefensible.
He sat huddled in the stern, nursing his swathed arms on his knees and whistling dolefully. The lake was a broad pool of silver. Save for the soft splash of Ijima's paddle behind me and the slight wash of water on the near shore, silence possessed the world. Gillespie looked about with some curiosity, but said nothing, and when I drove the boat to the Glenarm landing he crawled out and followed me through the wood without a word.
I flashed on the lights in the library and after a short inspection of his wounds we went to my room and found sponges, plasters and ointments in the family medicine chest and cared for his injuries.
"There's no honor in tumbling into a greenhouse, but such is R. Gillespie's luck. My shins look like scarlet fever, and without sound legs a man's better dead."
"Your legs seem to have got you into trouble; don't mourn the loss of them!" And I twisted a bandage under his left knee-cap where the glass had cut savagely.
"It's my poor wits, if we must fix the blame. It's an awful thing, sir, to be born with weak intellectuals. As man's legs carry him on orders from his head, there lies the seat of the difficulty. A weak mind, obedient legs, and there you go, plump into the bosom of a blooming asparagus bed, and the enemy lays violent hands on you. If you put any more of that sting-y pudding on that cut I shall undoubtedly hit you, Mr. Donovan. Ah, thank you, thank you so much!"
As I finished with the vaseline he lay back on the couch and sighed deeply and I rose and sent Ijima away with the basin and towels.
"Will you drink? There are twelve kinds of whisky—"
"My dear Mr. Donovan, the thought of strong drink saddens me. Such poor wits as mine are not helped by alcoholic stimulants. I was drunk once—beautifully, marvelously, nobly drunk, so that antiquity came up to date with the thud of a motor-car hitting an orphan asylum; and I saw Julius Caesar driving a chariot up Fifth Avenue and Cromwell poised on one foot on the shorter spire of St. Patrick's Cathedral. Are you aware, my dear sir, that one of those spires is shorter than the other?"
"I certainly am not," I replied bluntly, wondering what species of madman I had on my hands.
"It's a fact, confided to me by a prominent engineer of New York, who has studied those spires daily since they were put up. He told me that when he had surrounded five high-balls the north spire was higher; but that the sixth tumblerful always raised the south spire
