“Who is that?” asked Ardmore, with sinking spirit.
“Why, Rutherford Gillingwater, of course.”
“Fours right!” rang the command a moment later, and the militiamen tramped off to the station.
It was then that Ardmore, watching the crowd disperse at the edge of the park, saw his caller of the morning striding rapidly across the street. Ardmore started forward, then checked himself so suddenly that Miss Jerry Dangerfield turned to him inquiringly.
“What’s the matter?” she demanded.
“Nothing. I have been robbed, as I hoped to be. Over there, on the sidewalk, beyond the girl in the pink sunbonnet, goes my little brown jug. That lank individual with the shabby hat has lifted it out of my room at the hotel, just as I thought he would.”
CHAPTER VI.
MR. GRISWOLD FORSAKES THE ACADEMIC LIFE.
Miss Osborne had asked Griswold to await the outcome of the day, and, finding himself thus possessed of a vacation, he indulged his antiquarian instincts by exploring Columbia. The late afternoon found him in the lovely cathedral churchyard, where an aged negro, tending the graves of an illustrious family, leaned upon his spade and recited the achievements and virtues of the dead. Men who had been law-makers, others who had led valiantly to battle, and ministers of the Prince of Peace, mingled their dust together; and across the crisp hedges a robin sang above Timrod’s grave.
As the shadows lengthened, Griswold walked back to the hotel, where he ate supper, then, calling for a horse, he rode through the streets in a mood of more complete alienation than he had ever experienced in a foreign country; yet the very scents of the summer night, stealing out from old gardens, the voices that reached him from open doorways, spoke of home.
As he reached the outskirts of town and rode on toward the governor’s mansion, his mood changed, and he laughed softly, for he remembered Ardmore, and Ardmore was beyond question the most amusing person he knew. It was unfortunate, he generously reflected, that Ardmore, rather than himself, had not been plunged into this present undertaking, which was much more in Ardmore’s line than his own. There would, however, be a great satisfaction in telling Ardmore of his unexpected visit to Columbia, in exchange for his friend’s report of his pursuit of the winking eye. He only regretted that in the nature of things Columbia is a modern city, a seat of commerce as well as of government, a place where bank clearings are seriously computed, and where the jaunty adventurer with sword and ruffles is quite likely to run afoul of the police. Yet his own imagination was far more fertile than Ardmore’s, and he would have hailed a troop of mail-clad men as joyfully as his friend had he met them clanking in the highway. Thus modern as we think ourselves, the least venturesome among us dreams that some day some turn of a street corner will bring him face to face with what we please to call our fate; and this is the manifestation of our last drop of mediæval blood. The grimmest seeker after reality looks out of the corner of his eye for the flutter of a white handkerchief from the ivied tower he affects to ignore; and, in spite of himself, he is buoyed by the hope that some day a horn will sound for him over the nearest hill.