So I got him a horse, and he came
out with a long cane fishing-pole and a pair of saddle-bags. I told him
that he must watch the old nag or she would run away with him,
particularly when he started homeward. The tutor was not much of a
centaur. The horse started as he was throwing the wrong leg over his
saddle, and the tutor clamped his rod under one arm, clutching for the
reins with both hands and kicking for his stirrups with both feet. The
tip of the limber pole beat the horse's flank gently as she struck a
trot, and smartly as she struck into a lope, and so with arms, feet,
saddle-pockets, and fishing-rod flapping towards different points of the
compass, the tutor passed out of sight over Poplar Hill on a dead run.
As soon as he could get over a fit of laughter and catch his breath, the
colonel asked:
"Do you know what he had in those saddle-pockets?"
"No."
"A bathing suit," he shouted; and he went off again.
Not even in a primeval forest, it seemed, would the modest Puritan bare
his body to the mirror of limpid water and the caress of mountain air.
* * * * *
The trouble had begun early that morning, when Gordon, the town
sergeant, stepped from his door and started down the street with no
little self-satisfaction.
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