e atmosphere which had surrounded
him all day. He felt still the lift of the boat over the short swell, he
smelled the pleasant combination of salt, and gasolene, and the whiff of
the hayfields, and his eyes still kept the glare and the blue, and the
swinging dark shape of the _Dutchman's_ bows as he headed her down the
bay. Just before he reached Winterbottom Road, he saw, rather vaguely
through the twilight, the figures of a man and a small boy, coming
toward him. They had, apparently, seen him, also, for the man walked
more quickly for a step or two, then stopped altogether, and finally
turned sharply off the road and swung the child over a stone wall, with
a quick remark which Ken did not hear.

He did hear, however, the child's reply, for it was in a clear and
well-known voice. It said: "I don't think _this_ can be the way. I
didn't come over a wall."

The remainder of the cherry pie dropped to the dust of the Winterbottom
Road. Not more than three gigantic leaps brought Ken to the spot; he
vaulted the wall with a clean and magnificent spring that would have won
him fame at school. The man was a stranger, as Ken had thought--an
untidy and unshaven stranger. He was not quite so tall as Ken, who
seized him by the arm.

"May I ask where you're going?" roared Ken, at which the small boy
leaped rapturously, fastened himself to Ken's coat-tail, and cried:

"Oh, I'm so glad it's you! I started to come and meet you, and I walked
farther than I meant, and I got lost, and I met this person, and he said
he'd take me home, and--"

"Shut up!" said Ken. "_And let go of me!"_ at which Kirk, thoroughly
shocked, dropped back as though he could not believe his ears.

"I was takin' the kid home," muttered the man, "just like he says."

"Why were you going in exactly the opposite direction, then?" Ken
demanded.

As he leaped abreast of the man, who was trying to back away, the day's
receipts of the Sturgis Water Line jingled loudly in his trousers
pocket. The stranger, whose first plan had been so rudely interfered
with, determined on the instant not to leave altogether empty-handed,
and planted a forcible and unexpected blow on the side of Ken's head.
Ken staggered and went down, and Kirk, who had been standing dangerously
near all this activity, went down on top of him. It so happened that he
sprawled exactly on top of the trousers pocket aforesaid, and when the
man sought, with hasty and ungentle hands, to remove him from