We decided finally to leave the man free, but to take away his boat.

Gillespie was disposed to make light of the whole affair, now that we had got off with our lives. We searched the hut for weapons and ammunition, and having collected several knives and a belt and revolver from the trunk, we poured water on the Italian, carried him into the open and loosened the ropes with which Gillespie had tied him.

The man glared at us fiercely and muttered incoherently for a few minutes, but after Gillespie had dashed another pail of water on him he stood up and was tame enough.

"Tell him," said Gillespie, "that we shall not kill him to-day. Tell him that this being Tuesday we shall spare his life--that we never kill any one on Tuesday, but that we shall come back to-morrow and make shark meat of him. a.s.sure him that we are terrible villains and man-hunters--"

"When will your employer return?" I asked the sailor.

He shook his head and declared that he did not know.

"How long did he hire you for?"

"For all summer." He pointed to the sloop, and I got it out of him that he had been hired in New York to come to the lake and sail it.

"In the creek up yonder," I said, pointing toward the Tippecanoe, "you tried to kill me. There was another man with you. Who was he?"

"That was my boss," he replied reluctantly, though his English was clear enough.

"What is your employer's name?" I demanded.

"Holbrook. I sail his boat, the _Stiletto_, over there," he replied.

"But it was not he who was with you on the houseboat in the creek. Mr.

Holbrook was not there. Do not lie to me. Who was the other man that wanted you to kill Holbrook?"

He appeared mystified, and Gillespie, to whom I had told nothing of my encounter at the boat-maker's, looked from one to the other of us with a puzzled expression on his face.

"All he knows is that he's hired to sail a boat and, incidentally, stick people with his knife," said Gillespie in disgust. "We can do nothing till Holbrook comes back; let's be going."

We finally gathered up the Italian's oars, and, carrying the captured arms, went to the east sh.o.r.e, where we put off in Gillespie's rowboat, trailing the Italian's boat astern. The sailor followed us to the sh.o.r.e and watched our departure in silence. We swung round to the western sh.o.r.e and got my canoe, and there again, the Italian sullenly watched us.

"He's not so badly marooned," said Gillespie. "He can walk out over here."

"No, he'll wait for Holbrook. He's stumped now and doesn't understand us. He has exhausted his orders and is sick and tired of his job. A salt-water sailor loses his snap when he gets as far inland as this.

He'll demand his money when Holbrook turns up and clear out of this."

Gillespie took the oars himself, insisting that I must have a care for the slash across my chest, and so, towing the canoe and rowboat, we turned toward Glenarm. The Italian still watched us from the sh.o.r.e, standing beside a tall sycamore on a little promontory as though to follow us as far as possible.

We pa.s.sed close to the _Stiletto_ to get a better look at her. She was the trimmest sailing craft in those waters, and the largest, being, I should say, thirty-seven feet on the water-line, sloop-rigged, and with a cuddy large enough to house the skipper. As we drew alongside I stood up the better to examine her, and the Italian, still watching us intently from the island, cried out warningly.

"He should fly the signal, 'Owner not on board,'" remarked Gillespie as we pushed off and continued on our way.

The sun was low in the western wood as we pa.s.sed out into the larger lake. Gillespie took soundings with his oar in the connecting channel, and did not touch bottom.

"You wouldn't suppose the _Stiletto_ could get through here; it's as shallow as a sauce-pan; but there's plenty and to spare," he said, as he resumed rowing.

"But it takes a cool hand--" I began, then paused abruptly; for there, several hundred yards away, a little back from the western sh.o.r.e, against a strip of wood through which the sun burned redly, I saw a man and a woman slowly walking back and forth. Gillespie, laboring steadily at the oars, seemed not to see them, and I made no sign. My heart raced for a moment as I watched them pace back and forth, for there was something familiar in both figures. I knew that I had seen them before and talked with them; I would have sworn that the man was Henry Holbrook and the girl Helen; and I was aware that when they turned, once, twice, at the ends of their path, the girl made some delay; and when they went on she was toward the lake, as though shielding the man from our observation. The last sight I had of them the girl stood with her back to us, pointing into the west. Then she put up her hand to her bare head as though catching a loosened strand of hair; and the wind blew back her skirts like those of the Winged Victory. The two were etched sharply against the fringe of wood and bathed in the sun's glow. A second later the trees stood there alertly, with the golden targe of the sun shining like a giant's shield beyond; but they had gone, and my heart was numb with foreboding, or loneliness, and heavy with the weight of things I did not understand.

Gillespie tugged hard with the burden of the tow at his back. I will not deny that I was uncomfortable as I thought of his own affair with Helen Holbrook. He had, by any fair judgment, a prior claim. Her equivocal att.i.tude toward him and her inexplicable conduct toward her aunt were, I knew, appearing less and less heinous to me as the days pa.s.sed; and I was miserably conscious that my own duty to Miss Patricia lay less heavily upon me.

I was glad when we reached Glenarm pier, where we found Ijima hanging out the lamps. He gave me a telegram. It was from my New York acquaintance and read:

Holbrook left here two days ago; destination unknown.

"Come, Gillespie; you are to dine with me," I said, when he had read the telegram; and so we went up to the house together.

CHAPTER XV

I UNDERTAKE A COMMISSION

Sweet is every sound, Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn, The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees.

--_Tennyson_.

Gillespie availed himself of my wardrobe to replace his rags, and appeared in the library clothed and in his usual state of mind on the stroke of seven.

"You should have had the doctor out, Donovan. Being stuck isn't so funny, and you will undoubtedly die of blood-poisoning. Every one does nowadays."

"I shall disappoint you. Ijima and I between us have stuck me together like a cracked plate. And it is not well to publish our troubles to the world. If I called the village doctor he would kill his horse circulating the mysterious tidings. Are you satisfied?"

"Quite so. You're a man after my own heart, Donovan."

We had reached the dining-room and stood by our chairs.

"I should like," he said, taking up his c.o.c.ktail gla.s.s, "to propose a truce between us--"

"In the matter of a certain lady?"

"Even so! On the honor of a fool," he said, and touched his gla.s.s to his lips. "And may the best man win," he added, putting down the gla.s.s unemptied.

He was one of those comfortable people with whom it is possible to sit in silence; but after intervals in which we found nothing to say he would, with exaggerated gravity, make some utterly inane remark.

To-night his mind was more agile than ever, his thoughts leaping nimbly from crag to crag, like a mountain goat. He had traveled widely and knew the ways of many cities; and of American political characters, whose names were but vaguely known to me, he discoursed with delightful intimacy; then his mind danced away to a tour he had once made with a company of acrobats whose baggage he had released from the grasping hands of a rural sheriff.

"What," he asked presently, "is as sad as being deceived in a person you have admired and trusted? I knew a fellow who was professor of something in a blooming college, and who was so poor that he had to coach delinquent preps in summer-time instead of getting a vacation. I had every confidence in that fellow. I thought he was all right, and so I took him up into Maine with me--just the two of us--and hired an Indian to run our camp, and everything pointed to plus. Well, I always get stung when I try to be good."

He placed his knife and fork carefully across his plate and sighed deeply.

"What was the matter? Did he bore you with philosophy?"

"No such luck. That man was weak-minded on the subject of domesticating prairie-dogs. You may shoot me if that isn't the fact.

There he was, a prize-winner and a fellow of his university, and a fine scholar who edited Greek text-books, with that thing on his mind. He held that the daily example of the happy home life of the prairie-dog would tend to enn.o.ble all mankind and brighten up our family altars.

Think of being lost in the woods with a man with such an idea, and of having to sleep under the same blanket with him! It rained most of the time so we had to sit in the tent, and he never let up. He got so bad that he would wake me up in the night to talk prairie-dog."