I was soon stumbling through rough underbrush similar to that through which we had approached the house. Bates swung along confidently enough ahead of me, pausing occasionally to hold back the branches. I began to feel, as my rage abated, that I had set out on a foolish undertaking. I was utterly at sea as to the character of the grounds; I was following a man whom I had not seen until two hours before, and whom I began to suspect of all manner of designs upon me. It was wholly unlikely that the person who had fired into the windows would lurk about, and, moreover, the light of the lantern, the crack of the leaves and the breaking of the boughs advertised our approach loudly. I am, however, a person given to steadfastness in error, if nothing else, and I plunged along behind my guide with a grim determination to reach the margin of the lake, if for no other reason than to exercise my authority over the custodian of this strange estate.

A bush slapped me sharply and I stopped to rub the sting from my face.

“Are you hurt, sir?” asked Bates solicitously, turning with the lantern.

“Of course not,” I snapped. “I’m having the time of my life. Are there no paths in this jungle?”

“Not through here, sir. It was Mr. Glenarm’s idea not to disturb the wood at all. He was very fond of walking through the timber.”

“Not at night, I hope! Where are we now?”

“Quite near the lake, sir.”

“Then go on.”

I was out of patience with Bates, with the pathless woodland, and, I must confess, with the spirit of John Marshall Glenarm, my grandfather.

We came out presently upon a gravelly beach, and Bates stamped suddenly on planking.

“This is the Glenarm dock, sir; and that’s the boat-house.”

He waved his lantern toward a low structure that rose dark beside us. As we stood silent, peering out into the starlight, I heard distinctly the dip of a paddle and the soft gliding motion of a canoe.

“It’s a boat, sir” whispered Bates, hiding the lantern under his coat.

I brushed past him and crept to the end of the dock. The paddle dipped on silently and evenly in the still water, but the sound grew fainter. A canoe is the most graceful, the most sensitive, the most inexplicable contrivance of man. With its paddle you may dip up stars along quiet shores or steal into the very harbor of dreams. I knew that furtive splash instantly, and knew that a trained hand wielded the paddle. My boyhood summers in the Maine woods were not, I frequently find, wholly wasted.

The owner of the canoe had evidently stolen close to the Glenarm dock, and had made off when alarmed by the noise of our approach through the wood.

“Have you a boat here?”