“Well, it may seem strange,”—he laughed, and I felt the least bit foolish to be pointing a pistol at the head of a fellow of so amiable a spirit.
“Hurry,” I commanded.
“Well, as I was saying, it may seem strange; but I was just examining the wall to determine the character of the work. One of the cottagers on the lake left me with the job of building a fence on his place, and I’ve been expecting to come over to look at this all fall. You see, Mr. Glenarm, your honored grandfather was a master in such matters, as you may know, and I didn’t see any harm in getting the benefit—to put it so—of his experience.”
I laughed. He had denied having entered the house with so much assurance that I had been prepared for some really plausible explanation of his interest in the wall.
“Morgan—you said it was Morgan, didn’t you?—you are undoubtedly a scoundrel of the first water. I make the remark with pleasure.”
“Men have been killed for saying less,” he said.
“And for doing less than firing through windows at a man’s head. It wasn’t friendly of you.”
“I don’t see why you center all your suspicions on me. You exaggerate my importance, Mr. Glenarm. I’m only the man-of-all-work at a summer resort.”
“I wouldn’t believe you, Morgan, if you swore on a stack of Bibles as high as this wall.”
“Thanks!” he ejaculated mockingly.