My astonishment may be readily imagined when I beheld him in precisely the same attitude as before--that is to say, upon his hands and knees.
I was yet puzzling over this phenomenon when he again raked out the Panama on the end of the hunting-crop he carried, dusted it as before, looking about him the while with a bewildered air, and, setting it firmly upon his head, came down the path.
He was a tall young fellow, scrupulously neat and well groomed from the polish of his brown riding-boots to his small, sleek moustache, which was parted with elaborate care and twisted into two fine points. There was about his whole person an indefinable air of self-complacent satisfaction, but he carried his personality in his moustache, so to speak, which, though small, as I say, and precise to a hair, yet obtruded itself upon one in a vaguely unpleasant way. Noticing all this, I thought I might make a very good guess as to his identity if need were.
All at once, as I watched him--like a bird rising from her nest the devoted Panama rose in the air, turned over once or twice and fluttered (I use the word figuratively) into a bramble bush. Bad language was writ large in every line of his body as he stood looking about him, the hunting-crop quivering in his grasp.
It was at this precise juncture that his eye encountered me, and, pausing only to recover his unfortunate headgear, he strode toward where I sat.
"Do you know anything about this?" he inquired in a somewhat aggressive manner, holding up a length of black thread.
"A piece of ordinary pack-thread," I answered, affecting to examine it with a critical eye.
"Do you know anything about it?" he said again, evidently in a very bad temper.
"Sir," I answered, "I do not."
"Because if I thought you did----"