am filling this with the things you have forgotten."

I lost no time in telling her what I had overheard the night before, and
that the detective was gone from his tent. She stopped her packing and
looked at me in concern.

"He is probably watching us," she said. "Do you think we had better go?"

I thought it could do no harm. "If we are followed," said I, "all we
have to do is to turn back."

Miss Trevor came out as I spoke, and our conductor appeared, bending
under the hamper. I shouldered some blankets and the basket, and we
started. We followed a rough path, evidently cut by a camping party in
some past season, but now overgrown. The Fraction marched ahead, and I
formed the rear guard. Several times it seemed to me as though someone
were pushing after us, and more than once we halted. I put down the
basket and went back to reconnoitre. Once I believed I saw a figure
flitting in the gray light, but I set it down to my imagination.

Finally we reached a brook, sneaking along beneath the underbrush as
though fearing to show itself, and we followed its course. Branches
lashed our faces and brambles tore our clothes. And then, as the
sunlight was filtering through and turning the brook from blue to
crystal, we came upon the Celebrity. He was seated in a little open
space on the bank, apparently careless of capture. He did not even rise
at our approach. His face showed the effect of a sleepless night, and
wore an expression inimical to all mankind. The conductor threw his
bundle on the bank and laid his hand on the Celebrity's shoulder.

"Halloa, old man!" said he, cheerily. "You must have had a hard night
of it. But we couldn't make you any sooner, because that hawk of an
officer had his eye on us."

The Celebrity shook himself free. And in place of the gratitude for
which the Fraction had looked, and which he had every reason to expect,
he got something different.

"This outrage has gone far enough," said the Celebrity, with a terrible
calmness. The Fraction was a man of the world.

"Come, come, old chap!" he said soothingly, "don't cut up. We'll make
things a little more homelike here." And he pulled a bottle from the
depths of the hamper. "This will brace you up."

He picked up the hamper and disappeared into the place of retention,
while the Celebrity threw the bottle into the brush. And just then (may
I be forgiven if I am imaginative!) I heard a human laugh come from that
direction. In the casting of th