“Hello, there!”
“Good afternoon,” said the stranger, in a quiet cultivated voice.
“Would you mind telling me what you are doing on my wall.”
“Not in the least,” replied the bearded man, rising buoyantly into full view, and subsiding again with the rhythm of a wave.
“Well, what are you doing?”
“Taking a little exercise.”
By this time, having reached the end of the wall, he turned and came back, making the step with his right leg instead of his left. Sedgwick hurried down-stairs and out into the roadway. The stranger continued his performance silently. At closer inspection it appealed to the artist as even more mysterious both in purport and execution than it had looked at a distance.
“Do you do that often?” he asked presently.
The gymnast paused, poised like a Mercury on the high coping. “Yes,” said he. “Otherwise I shouldn’t be able to do it at all.”
“I should think not, indeed! Has it any particular utility, that form of exercise?”