"The classics?" the stranger asked respectfully.
"Oh, Lord, no!" poor Lloyd burst out explosively. "Excuse me, but I'm an athletic coach. He wants to train down for the gridiron—and he needs it, too—going all to fat."
Once more the long keen scrutiny, from which Lloyd visibly winced; his cheeks reddened; his hot, hunted eyes gazed straight ahead; his step flagged. Nevertheless he held his ground and kept his self-control.
"And is this coaching your regular profession?" the inquisitive stranger persisted.
"I have no regular profession," Lloyd hesitated. Then, gathering his nerve with a mighty effort, he boldly risked absolute candour. "I have done many stunts in the athletic line. Performed in circuses and shows; sung a little, too——" with a wry contortion of his perfectly chiselled lips, for he knew what good music is, and he loved it. "But lately I have been trying to make some money on my own account. I have been the manager of a street fair——"
"Oh, fool, fool, fool!" Jardine apostrophised him, between set teeth.
"A good, clean show it was," continued Lloyd, "some unparalleled attractions; finest high dive I ever saw. But we went to pieces here—got stranded—and——"
The wind carried away the words, and as Jardine, still muttering, "Fool—fool," looked up, he saw the tall, portly figure stop short, lean forward, and clutch the manager excitedly by the arm. The next moment the foliage intervened. Suddenly there rose on the air Lloyd's voice, pitched high, in wild agitated exclamations, and the deep, steady, bass tones of the stranger. Then was silence, and the forests received them, and the tourists below saw and heard no more.
CHAPTER XV
To Jardine's infinite relief these two of his fellow-travellers did not reappear. Lloyd evidently had had the grace not to resist to the extreme of coercion, and thus had spared the ladies, and indeed Mr. Jardine's own delicate sensibilities, the indignity of being even remotely concerned in so sordid a scene. He hardly wondered whither they had gone, when the hack, with Frank and himself once more seated within with the ladies, rattled up to the door of the hotel at the New Helvetia Springs, for the officer would naturally be expected to hurry his prisoner to some wayside log cabin, and there await transportation to Colbury. It would have been a needless expense, as well as a gratuitous affront to the ladies and gentlemen at New Helvetia, to introduce amongst them so offensive a personality as a Federal prisoner.