"Then of course you live a good way from here."
"Not so very far; not more than twenty miles, but it might as well be a thousand for all I know about this city. But you are wheelmen, of course. Well, now I wish—but say," added the speaker, as if something had just occurred to him. "Why did you grab me and call me a runaway?"
"Because we thought you were. I mean we took you for a runaway from our party," said Joe; and then he wondered why it was that the stranger exhibited so much anxiety and even alarm at the words. "There is another fellow in our party, but we have lost him in some unaccountable manner."
"Does he look anything like me?"
"He does, indeed; so very much like you that when we saw you with our uniform on we took you for our missing friend. You are a little stouter than he is. That's all the difference there is in your figures; but to look at your faces a little distance away, any one not well acquainted with you would take you for twin brothers. How did you happen to choose that uniform? What club do you belong to?"
"I don't belong to any club. How does it come that you happened to choose it when there were so many more that you might have taken?"
"We made it up all out of our own heads," replied Arthur.
"I can't say that I did. I copied it. The Jamestown boys wear it, and I have seen a good many bicyclists running along the road past our island dressed in the same way."
"Your island!" repeated Joe.
"Yes; my island prison, for that is just what it is to me. Let's go into the reading-room," said the stranger, seeing that the hotel clerk was becoming interested in their conversation. "I don't care to have everybody hear what I say."