Part 13 (1/2)

”Yes, sah, Colonel!”

”Um! Well, see that you mind!”

Selecting with care a fly from his numerous collection, and hoping the appet.i.tes of the fish would incline them to consider it favorably that morning, Colonel Ashley proceeded to make his casts, standing not far from a bent, gnarled and twisted elm tree, that overhung the bank of the stream where the current had cut into the soil, making a deep eddy, in which a lazy trout might choose to lie in wait for some choice morsel.

Lightly as a falling feather, the fisherman let his fly come to rest on the sun-lit water, and, hardly had it sent the first, few faint ripples circling toward sh.o.r.e than there was a shrill song of the reel, and the rod became a bent bow.

”By the bones of Sir Izaak!” cried the colonel, ”I've hooked one, s.h.a.g!”

”De Lord be praised! So yo' has, Colonel!” cried the negro.

”Shut up!” ordered the colonel, who was beginning to play his fish.

”Did I tell you to speak?”

But s.h.a.g only laughed. He knew his master.

After ten minutes of skilful work, during which time the trout nearly got away by shooting under a submerged log like an undersea boat diving beneath a battle cruiser, the colonel landed his fish, dropping it, panting, on the green gra.s.s. Then he looked up at s.h.a.g and remarked:

”Didn't I tell you this was a perfectly beautiful day?”

”Yo' suah did, Colonel,” was the chuckling answer. ”Yo' suah did!”

And so much at peace with himself and all the world was Colonel Robert Lee Ashley just then that, when the crackling of the underbrush behind him, a moment later, gave notice that some one was approaching, there was even a smile on his face, though, usually, he could not bear to be intruded upon when fis.h.i.+ng.

Rather idly the colonel, having mercifully killed his fish by a blow on top of the head and slipped it into the gra.s.s-lined creel, looked up to see approaching a young lady and a tall and somewhat lanky boy. There was some thing vaguely familiar about the boy, though the fisherman did not tax his mind with remembering, then, where or when he had seen him before.

”There he is,” went the words of the boy, as he and the young woman came in sight of the colonel and s.h.a.g--but it was at the detective the lad pointed. ”There he is!”

The girl rushed impulsively forward, and, as she held out her hands in a voiceless appeal, there was worry and anguish depicted on her face.

”Are you Colonel Brentnall?” she asked.

The colonel was sufficiently familiar with his alias not to betray surprise when it was used.

”I am,” he said, and the peaceful, joyous look that had come into his eyes when he had landed his fish gave way to a hard and professional stare.

”Oh, Colonel Brentnall! I've come to ask you to help me--help him!

You will, won't you? Don't say you won't!”

The girl's face, her blue eyes, the outstretched hands, the very poise of her lithe, young body voiced the appeal.

”My dear young lady,” began the colonel. But she interrupted with:

”You're the detective, aren't you?”

”Well--er--I--Say rather _a_ detective, for there are many, and I am only one.”

”But you are the one from New York?”

”I am though I don't know how you guessed it. I am not here professionally, though--in fact, I've practically retired--and I would much prefer--”