“Well,” he exclaimed, “this has been very pleasant, but I must run. I have just been over to see Morgan, the caretaker at the resort village. The poor fellow accidentally shot himself yesterday, cleaning his gun or something of that sort, and he has an ugly hole in his arm that will shut him in for a month or worse. He gave me an errand to do for him. He’s a conscientious fellow and wished me to wire for him to Mr. Pickering that he’d been hurt, but was attending to his duties. Pickering owns a cottage over there, and Morgan has charge of it. You know Pickering, of course?”
I looked my clerical neighbor straight in the eye, a trifle coldly perhaps. I was wondering why Morgan, with whom I had enjoyed a duel in my own cellar only a few hours before, should be reporting his injury to Arthur Pickering.
“I think I have seen Morgan about here,” I said.
“Oh, yes! He’s a woodsman and a hunter—our Nimrod of the lake.”
“A good sort, very likely!”
“I dare say. He has sometimes brought me ducks during the season.”
“To be sure! They shoot ducks at night,—these Hoosier hunters,—so I hear!”
He laughed as he shook himself into his greatcoat.
“That’s possible, though unsportsmanlike. But we don’t have to look a gift mallard in the eye.”
We laughed together. I found that it was easy to laugh with him.