Gillespie took the oars himself, insisting that I must have a care for the slash across my chest, and so, towing the canoe and rowboat, we turned toward Glenarm. The Italian still watched us from the shore, standing beside a tall sycamore on a little promontory as though to follow us as far as possible.
We passed close to the Stiletto to get a better look at her. She was the trimmest sailing craft in those waters, and the largest, being, I should say, thirty-seven feet on the water-line, sloop-rigged, and with a cuddy large enough to house the skipper. As we drew alongside I stood up the better to examine her, and the Italian, still watching us intently from the island, cried out warningly.
"He should fly the signal, 'Owner not on board,'" remarked Gillespie as we pushed off and continued on our way.
The sun was low in the western wood as we passed out into the larger lake. Gillespie took soundings with his oar in the connecting channel, and did not touch bottom.
"You wouldn't suppose the Stiletto could get through here; it's as shallow as a sauce-pan; but there's plenty and to spare," he said, as he resumed rowing.
"But it takes a cool hand—" I began, then paused abruptly; for there, several hundred yards away, a little back from the western shore, against a strip of wood through which the sun burned redly, I saw a man and a woman slowly walking back and forth. Gillespie, laboring steadily at the oars, seemed not to see them, and I made no sign. My heart raced for a moment as I watched them pace back and forth, for there was something familiar in both figures. I knew that I had seen them before and talked with them; I would have sworn that the man was Henry Holbrook and the girl Helen; and I was aware that when they turned, once, twice, at the ends of their path, the girl made some delay; and when they went on she was toward the lake, as though shielding the man from our observation. The last sight I had of them the girl stood with her back to us, pointing into the west. Then she put up her hand to her bare head as though catching a loosened strand of hair; and the wind blew back her skirts like those of the Winged Victory. The two were etched sharply against the fringe of wood and bathed in the sun's glow. A second later the trees stood there alertly, with the golden targe of the sun shining like a giant's shield beyond; but they had gone, and my heart was numb with foreboding, or loneliness, and heavy with the weight of things I did not understand.
Gillespie tugged hard with the burden of the tow at his back. I will not deny that I was uncomfortable as I thought of his own affair with Helen Holbrook. He had, by any fair judgment, a prior claim. Her equivocal attitude toward him and her inexplicable conduct toward her aunt were, I knew, appearing less and less heinous to me as the days passed; and I was miserably conscious that my own duty to Miss Patricia lay less heavily upon me.
I was glad when we reached Glenarm pier, where we found Ijima hanging out the lamps. He gave me a telegram. It was from my New York acquaintance and read:
Holbrook left here two days ago; destination unknown.
"Come, Gillespie; you are to dine with me," I said, when he had read the telegram; and so we went up to the house together.