I could hear the man running behind me and suddenly I heard him begin to make a strange noise. It sounded like a child trying to blow upon a penny whistle, then I realised that it was the sound of his breath whistling past the knifeblade clinched between his teeth.

Suddenly something overtook and passed me, making a tremendous uproar in the shrubbery. It rushed so near me that I could see its glaring eyes and the shape of a huge beast with horns, which I recognised a moment later as Carleton's, Mr. Van Dyming's prize Durham bull; an animal so dangerous that Mr. Dyming is forced to keep it locked up. It was now free and it rushed past and on ahead, cutting off my advance, while the madman with the knife cut off my retreat. I was at bay; I stopped with my back to a tree, screaming for help.

"How did the bull get out?" I said.

He was watching my face while I read, like I might have been a teacher grading his school paper. "When I was a boy, I used to take subscriptions to the Police Gazette, for premiums. One of the premiums was a little machine guaranteed to open any lock. I don't use it anymore, but I still carry it in my pocket, like a charm or something, I guess. Anyway, I had it that night." He looked down at the paper on the table.

"I guess folks tell what they believe they saw. So you have to believe what they think they believe. But that paper don't tell how she kicked off her slippers (I nigh broke my neck over one of them) so she could run better, and how I could hear her going wump-wump-wump inside like a dray horse, and how when she would begin to slow up a little I would let out another toot on the whistle and off she would go again.

"I couldn't even keep up with her, carrying that portfolio and trying to blow on that whistle too; seemed like I never would get the hang of it, somehow. But maybe that was because I had to start trying so quick, before I had time to kind of practice up, and running all the time too. So I threw the portfolio away and then I caught up with her where she was standing with her back against the tree, and that bull running round and round the tree, not bothering her, just running around the tree, making a right smart of fuss, and her leaning there whispering 'Carleton. Carleton' like she was afraid she would wake him up."

The account continued: I stood against the tree, believing that each circle which the bull made, it would discover my presence. That was why I ceased to scream. Then the man came up where I could see him plainly for the first time. He stopped before me; for one both horrid and joyful moment I thought he was Mr. Van Dyming. "Carleton!" I said.

He didn't answer. He was stooped over again; then I saw that he was engaged with the knife in his hand.

"Carleton!" I cried.

"'Dang if I can get the hang of it, somehow,' he kind of muttered, busy with the murderous knife.

"Carleton!" I cried. "Are you mad?"

He looked up then. I saw that it was not my husband, that I was at the mercy of a madman, a maniac, and a maddened bull. I saw the man raise the knife to his lips and blow again upon it that fearful shriek. Then I fainted.

IV.

AND THAT WAS ALL. The account merely went on to say how the madman had vanished, leaving no trace, and that Mrs. Van Dyming was under the care of her physician, with a special train waiting to transport her and her household, lock, stock, and barrel, back to New York; and that Mr. Van Dyming in a brief interview had informed the press that his plans about the improvement of the place had been definitely rescinded and that the place was now for sale.

I folded the paper as carefully as he would have. "Oh," I said. "And so that's all."

"Yes. I waked up about daylight the next morning, in the woods. I didn't know when I went to sleep nor where I was at first. I couldn't remember at first what I had done. But that ain't strange. I guess a man couldn't lose a day out of his life and not know it. Do you think so?"

"Yes," I said. "That's what I think too."

"Because I know I ain't as evil to God as I guess I look to a lot of folks. And I guess that demons and such and even the devil himself ain't quite as evil to God as lots of folks that claim to know a right smart about His business would make you believe. don't you think that's right?" The wallet lay on the table, open. But he did not at once return the newspaper to it.

Then he quit looking at me; at once his face became diffident, childlike again. He put his hand into the wallet; again he did not withdraw it at once.

"That ain't exactly all," he said, his hand inside the wallet, his eyes downcast, and his face: that mild, peaceful, nondescript face across which a mild moustache straggled. "I was a powerful reader, when I was a boy. Do you read much?"

"Yes. A good deal."

But he was not listening. "I would read about pirates and cowboys, and I would be the head pirate or cowboy me, a durn little tyke that never saw the ocean except at Coney Island or a tree except in Washington Square day in and out. But I read them, believing like every boy, that some day... that living wouldn't play a trick on him like getting him alive and then... When I went home that morning to get ready to take the train, Martha says, "You're just as good as any of them Van Dymings, for all they get into the papers. If all the folks that deserved it got into the papers, Park Avenue wouldn't hold them, or even Brooklyn,' she says."

He drew his hand from the wallet. This time it was only a clipping, one column wide, which he handed me, yellow and faded too, and not long: MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED Wilfred Middleton, New York Architect, Disappears From Millionaire's Country House POSSE SEEKS BODY OF ARCHITECT BELIEVED SLAIN BY MADMAN IN VIRGINIA MOUNTAINS May Be Coupled With Mysterious Attack On Mrs. Van Dyming Mountain Neighborhood In State Of Terror , Va. April 8, Wilfred Middleton, 56, architect, of New York City, mysteriously disappeared sometime on April 6th, while en route to the country house of Mr. Carleton Van Dyming near here. He had in his possession some valuable drawings which were found this morning near the Van Dyming estate, thus furnishing the first clue. Chief of Police Elmer Harris has taken charge of the case, and is now awaiting the arrival of a squad of New York detectives, when he promises a speedy solution if it is in the power of skilled criminologists to do so.

MOST BAFFLING IN ALL HIS EXPERIENCE.

"When I solve this disappearance," Chief Harris is quoted, "I will also solve the attack on Mrs. Van Dyming on the same date."

Middleton leaves a wife, Mrs. Martha Middleton, St., Brooklyn.

He was watching my face. "Only it's one mistake in it," he said.

"Yes!" I said. "They got your name wrong."

"I was wondering if you'd see that. But that's not the mistake..." He had in his hand a second clipping which he now extended. It was like the other two; yellow, faint. I looked at it, the fading, peaceful print through which, like a thin, rotting net, the old violence had somehow escaped, leaving less than the dead gesture fallen to quiet dust. "Read this one. Only that's not the mistake I was thinking about. But then, they couldn't have known at that time..."

I was reading, not listening to him. This was a reprinted letter, an 'agony column' letter: New Orleans, La. April 10,...

To the Editor, New York Times New York, N. Y.

Dear Sir In your issue of April 8, this year you got the name of the party wrong. The name is Midgleston not Middleton. Would thank you to correct this error in local and metropolitan columns as the press a weapon of good evil into every American home. And a power of that weight cannot afford mistakes even about people as good as any man or woman even if they don't get into the papers every day.

Thanking you again; beg to remain A Friend "Oh," I said. "I see. You corrected it."

"Yes. But that's not the mistake. I just did that for her. You know how women are. Like as not she would rather not see it in the papers at all than to see it spelled wrong."

"She?"

"My wife. Martha. The mistake was, if she got them or not."

"I don't. Maybe you'd better tell me."

"That's what I am doing. I got two of the first one, the one about the disappearance, but I waited until the letter come out. Then I put them both into a piece of paper with A Friend on it, and put them into a envelope and mailed them to her. But I don't know if she got them or not. That was the mistake."

"The mistake?"

"Yes. She moved. She moved to Park Avenue when the insurance was paid. I saw that in a paper after I come down here. It told about how Mrs. Martha Midgleston of Park Avenue was married to a young fellow, he used to be associated with the Maison Payot on Fifth Avenue. It didn't say when she moved, so I don't know if she got them or not."

"Oh," I said. He was putting the clippings carefully back into the canvas wallet.

"Yes, sir. Women are like that. It don't cost a man much to humor them now and then. Because they deserve it; they have a hard time. But it wasn't me. I didn't mind how they spelled it. What's a name to a man that's done and been something outside the lot and plan for mortal human man to do and be?"

The Leg.

THE BOAT, it was a yawl boat with a patched weathered sail made two reaches below us while I sat with the sculls poised, watching her over my shoulder, and George clung to the pile, spouting Milton at Everbe Corinthia. When it made the final tack I looked back at George. But he was now but well into Comus' second speech, his crooked face raised, and the afternoon bright on his close ruddy head.

"Give way, George," I said. But he held us stationary at the pile, his glazed hat lifted, spouting his fine and cadenced folly as though the lock, the Thames, time and all, belonged to him, while Sabrina (or Hebe or Chloe or whatever name he happened to be calling Corinthia at the time) with her dairy-maid's complexion and her hair like mead poured in sunlight stood above us in one of her endless succession of neat print dresses, her hand on the lever and one eye on George and the other on the yawl, saying "Yes, milord" dutifully whenever George paused for breath.

The yawl luffed and stood away; the helmsman shouted for the lock.

"Let go, George," I said. But he clung to the pile in his fine and incongruous oblivion. Everbe Corinthia stood above us, her hand on the lever, bridling a little and beginning to reveal a certain concern, and looking from her to the yawl and back again I thought how much time she and I had both spent thus since that day three years ago when, cow-eyed and bridling, she had opened the lock for us for the first time, with George holding us stationary while he apostrophised her in the metaphor of Keats and Spenser.

Again the yawl's crew shouted at us, the yawl aback and in stays. "Let go, you fool!" I said, digging the sculls. "Lock, Corinthia!"

George looked at me. Corinthia was now watching the yawl with both eyes. "What, Davy?" George said. "Must even thou help Circe's droves into the sea? Pull, then, O Super-Gadarene!"

And he shoved us off. I had not meant to pull away. And even if I had, I could still have counteracted the movement if Everbe Corinthia hadn't opened the lock. But open it she did, and looked once back to us and sat flat on the earth, crisp fresh dress and all. The skiff shot away under me; I had a fleeting picture of George still clinging with one arm around the pile, his knees drawn up to his chin and the hat in his lifted hand and of a long running shadow carrying the shadow of a boat-hook falling across the lock. Then I was too busy steering. I shot through the gates, carrying with me that picture of George, the glazed hat still gallantly aloft like the mastheaded pennant of a man-of-war, vanishing beneath the surface. Then I was floating quietly in slack water while the round eyes of two men stared quietly down at me from the yawl.

"Yer've lost yer mate, sir," one of them said in a civil voice. Then they had drawn me alongside with a boat-hook and standing up in the skiff, I saw George. He was standing in the towpath now, and Simon, Everbe Corinthia's father, and another man, he was the one with the boat-hook, whose shadow I had seen across the lock, were there too.

But I saw only George with his ugly crooked face and his round head now dark in the sunlight. One of the watermen was still talking. "Steady, sir. Lend 'im a 'and, Sam'l. There. 'E'll do now. Give 'im a turn, seeing 'is mate..."

"You fool, you damned fool!" I said. George stooped beside me, wringing his sopping flannels, while Simon and the second man Simon with his iron-gray face and his iron-gray whisker that made him look like nothing so much as an aged bull peering surlily and stupidly across a winter hedgerow, and the second man, younger, with a ruddy capable face, in a hard, boardlike, town-made suit watched us. Corinthia sat on the ground, weeping hopelessly and quietly. "You damned fool. Oh, you damned fool."

"Oxford young gentlemen," Simon said in a harsh disgusted voice. "Oxford young gentlemen."

"Eh, well," George said, "I daresay I haven't damaged your lock over a farthing's worth." He rose, and saw Corinthia. "What, Circe!" he said, "tears over the accomplishment of your appointed destiny?" He went to her, trailing a thread of water across the packed earth, and took her arm. It moved willing enough, but she herself sat flat on the ground, looking up at him with streaming hopeless eyes. Her mouth was open a little and she sat in an attitude of patient despair, weeping tears of crystal purity. Simon watched them, the boat-hook, he had taken it from the second man, who was now busy at the lock mechanism, and I knew that he was the brother who worked in London, of whom Corinthia had once told us clutched in his big knotty fist. The yawl was now in the lock, the two faces watching us across the parapet like two severed heads in a quiet row upon the footway. "Come, now," George said. "You'll soil your dress sitting there."

"Up, lass," Simon said, in that harsh voice of his which at the same time was without ill-nature, as though harshness were merely the medium through which he spoke. Corinthia rose obediently, still weeping, and went on toward the neat little dove-cote of a house in which they lived. The sunlight was slanting level across it and upon George's ridiculous figure. He was watching me.

"Well, Davy," he said, "if I didn't know better, I'd say from your expression that you are envying me."

"Am I?" I said. "You fool. You ghastly lunatic."

Simon had gone to the lock. The two quiet heads rose slowly, as though they were being thrust gradually upward from out the earth, and Simon now stooped with the boathook over the lock. He rose, with the limp anonymity of George's once gallant hat on the end of the boat-hook, and extended it. George took it as gravely. "Thanks," he said.

He dug into his pocket and gave Simon a coin. "For wear and tear on the boat-hook," he said. "And perhaps a bit of balm for your justifiable disappointment, eh, Simon?"

Simon grunted and turned back to the lock. The brother was still watching us. "And I am obliged to you," George said. "Hope I'll never have to return the favor in kind." The brother said something, short and grave, in a slow pleasant voice. George looked at me again. "Well, Davy."

"Come on. Let's go."

"Right you are. Where's the skiff?" Then I was staring at him again, and for a moment he stared at me. Then he shouted, a long ringing laugh, while the two heads in the yawl watched us from beyond Simon's granite-like and contemptuous back. I could almost hear Simon thinking Oxford young gentlemen. "Davy, have you lost the skiff?"

"She's tied up below a bit, sir," the civil voice in the yawl said. "The gentleman walked out of 'er like she were a keb, without looking back."

The June afternoon slanted across my shoulder, full upon George's face. He would not take my jacket. "I'll pull down and keep warm," he said. The once-glazed hat lay between his feet.

"Why don't you throw that thing out?" I said. He pulled steadily, looking at me. The sun was full in his eyes, striking the yellow flecks in them into fleeting, mica-like sparks.

"That hat," I said. "What do you want with it?"

"Oh; that. Cast away the symbol of my soul?" He unshipped one scull and picked up the hat and turned and cocked it on the stem, where it hung with a kind of gallant and dissolute jauntiness. "The symbol of my soul rescued from the deep by..."

"Hauled out of a place it had no business being whatever, by a public servant who did not want his public charge cluttered up."

"At least you admit the symbology," he said. "And that the empire rescued it. So it is worth something to the empire. Too much for me to throw it away. That which you have saved from death or disaster will be forever dear to you, Davy; you cannot ignore it. Besides, it will not let you. What is it you Americans say?"

"We say, bunk. Why not use the river for a while? It's paid for."

He looked at me. "Ah. That is... Well, anyway, it's American, isn't it. That's something."

But he got out into the current again. A barge was coming up, in tow. We got outside her and watched her pass, empty of any sign of life, with a solemn implacability like a huge barren catafalque, the broad-rumped horses, followed by a boy in a patched coat and carrying a peeled goad, plodding stolidly along the path. We dropped slowly astern. Over her freeboard a motionless face with a dead pipe in its teeth contemplated us with eyes empty of any thought.

"If I could have chosen," George said, "I'd like to have been pulled out by that chap yonder. Can't you see him picking up a boat-hook without haste and fishing you out without even shifting the pipe?"

"You should have chosen your place better, then. But it seems to me you're in no position to complain!"

"But Simon showed annoyance. Not surprise nor concern: just annoyance. I don't like to be hauled back into life by an annoyed man with a boat-hook."

"You could have said so at the time. Simon didn't have to save you. He could have shut the gates until he got another head of water, and flushed you right out of his bailiwick without touching you, and saved himself trouble and ingratitude. Besides Corinthia's tears."

"Ay; tears. Corinthia will at least cherish a tenderness for me from now on."

"Yes; but if you'd only not got out at all. Or having not got in at all. Falling into that filthy lock just to complete a gesture. I think..."

"Do not think, my good David. When I had the choice of holding on to the skiff and being haled safely and meekly away, or of giving the lie to the stupid small gods at the small price of being temporarily submerged in this..." he let go one oar and dipped his hand in the water, then he flung it outward in dripping, burlesque magniloquence. "O Thames!" he said. "Thou mighty sewer of an empire!"

"Steer the boat," I said. "I lived in America long enough to have learned something of England's pride."

"And so you consider a bath in this filthy old sewer that has flushed this land since long before He who made it had any need to invent God... a rock about which man and all his bawling clamor seethes away to sluttishness..."

We were twenty-one then; we talked like that, tramping about that peaceful land where in green petrification the old splendid bloody deeds, the spirits of the blundering courageous men, slumbered in every stone and tree. For that was 1914, and in the parks bands played Valse Septembre, and girls and young men drifted in punts on the moonlit river and sang Mister Moon and There's a Bit of Heaven, and George and I sat in a window in Christ Church while the curtains whispered in the twilight, and talked of courage and honor and Napier and love and Ben Jonson and death.

The next year was 1915, and the bands played God Save the King, and the rest of the young men and some not so young sang Mademoiselle of Armentieres in the mud, and George was dead.

He had gone out in October, a subaltern in the regiment of which his people were hereditary colonels. Ten months later I saw him sitting with an orderly behind a ruined chimney on the edge of Givenchy. He had a telephone strapped to his ears and he was eating something which he waved at me as we ran past and ducked into the cellar which we sought.

II.

I TOLD HIM to wait until they got done giving me the ether; there were so many of them moving back and forth that I was afraid someone would brush against him and find him there. "And then you'll have to go back," I said.

"I'll be careful," George said.

"Because you'll have to do something for me," I said.

"You'll have to."

"All right. I will. What is it?"

"Wait until they go away, then I can tell you. You'll have to do it, because I can't. Promise you will."

"All right. I promise." So we waited until they got done and had moved down to my leg. Then George came nearer.

"What is it?" he said.

"It's my leg!" I said. "I want you to be sure it's dead. They may cut it off in a hurry and forget about it."

"All right. I'll see about it."

"I couldn't have that, you know. That wouldn't do at all. They might bury it and it couldn't lie quiet. And then it would be lost and we couldn't find it to do anything."