“I—I did not come this way to meet you; I was just passing...”

And her face darkened in a blush.


XXI

My foot continued to trouble me a good deal. It often itched at nights, and kept me awake; a sudden spasm would shoot through it, and in changeable weather it was full of gout. It was like that for many days. But it did not make me lame, after all.

The days went on.

Herr Mack had returned, and I knew it soon enough. He took my boat away from me, and left me in difficulties, for it was still the closed season, and there was nothing I could shoot. But why did he take the boat away from me like that? Two of Herr Mack's folk from the quay had rowed out with a stranger in the morning.

I met the Doctor.

“They have taken my boat away,” I said.