"You will pardon my candor, but you certainly look like the devil. There's a rip in your trousers that needs explaining and that swipe on your face reminds me of a map of the Mississippi done in red ink. Let me introduce myself to you as the Governor. Among the powers that prey that is my proud cognomen, not to say alias. Now please be frank—what mischief brings you here at this pale hour?"
Archie gave serious thought to his answer. If he could convince this singular person that he was a crook he would be less likely to suspect that he had been the instrument of Hoky's undoing. And there was the possibility that if he met the Governor's friendly advances in a reciprocal spirit the man might help him out of his predicament. The Governor was waiting for his answer, humming pleasantly as he surveyed the heavens.
"I've got to make a getaway and be in a hurry about it," declared Archie with a confidential air that caused a humorous light to play in the Governor's eyes.
"A little trouble of some sort, eh? Perhaps fearing a collision with the revised statutes of this or adjacent states?"
"Something like that," Archie answered huskily.
"It rather occurred to me that you were not promenading for mere pleasure," replied the Governor, drawing his hand across his chin. "The causes that lead people to travel have been enumerated by no less an authority than Mr. Laurence Sterne as—
"Infirmity of body,
"Imbecility of mind, or
"Inevitable necessity.
"Unless my memory errs the same authority classifies travelers as the idle, the inquisitive, the lying, the proud, the vain, the splenetic; to which he added the delinquent and felonious traveler, the unfortunate and innocent traveler, the traveler without aim and the wandering sentimentalist. From the looks of your clothing I should judge that you belong to the necessitous group, though from a certain uneasy expression I might easily place you among the delinquent and criminal. A fashionable defaulter perhaps? No. Then let it go at murder, though I confess you don't look as though you'd have a stomach for homicide."