f September ninth, last.

McKnight could tell the story a great deal better than I, although
he can not spell three consecutive words correctly. But, while he has
imagination and humor, he is lazy.

"It didn't happen to me, anyhow," he protested, when I put it up to
him. "And nobody cares for second-hand thrills. Besides, you want the
unvarnished and ungarnished truth, and I'm no hand for that. I'm a
lawyer."

So am I, although there have been times when my assumption in that
particular has been disputed. I am unmarried, and just old enough to
dance with the grown-up little sisters of the girls I used to know. I
am fond of outdoors, prefer horses to the aforesaid grown-up little
sisters, am without sentiment (am crossed out and was substituted.-Ed.)
and completely ruled and frequently routed by my housekeeper, an elderly
widow.

In fact, of all the men of my acquaintance, I was probably the most
prosaic, the least adventurous, the one man in a hundred who would be
likely to go without a deviation from the normal through the orderly
procession of the seasons, summer suits to winter flannels, golf to
bridge.

So it was a queer freak of the demons of chance to perch on my
unsusceptible thirty-year-old chest, tie me up with a crime, ticket
me with a love affair, and start me on that sensational and not always
respectable journey that ended so surprisingly less than three weeks
later in the firm's private office. It had been the most remarkable
period of my life. I would neither give it up nor live it again under
any inducement, and yet all that I lost was some twenty yards off my
drive!

It was really McKnight's turn to make the next journey. I had a
tournament at Chevy Chase for Saturday, and a short yacht cruise planned
for Sunday, and when a man has been grinding at statute law for a week,
he needs relaxation. But McKnight begged off. It was not the first time
he had shirked that summer in order to run down to Richmond, and I was
surly about it. But this time he had a new excuse. "I wouldn't be able
to look after the business if I did go," he said. He has a sort of
wide-eyed frankness that makes one ashamed to doubt him. "I'm always car
sick crossing the mountains. It's a fact, Lollie. See-sawing over the
peaks does it. Why, crossing the Alleghany Mountains has the Gulf Stream
to Bermuda beaten to a frazzle."

So I gave him up finally and went home to pack. He came later in the
evening with his machine, the Can