But he, who ought to have thrown the line for her, in his distraction let her drop her oar and throw the line herself, and then we scrambled aboard without hearing any more of the murder.
This is the climax I have been working up to, and I call it a fine one; as good as a story to be continued ever ended an instalment with.
A DAY AT DONCASTER AND AN HOUR OUT OF DURHAM
The Doncaster Races lured us from our hotel at York, on the first day, as I had dimly foreboded they would. In fact, if there had been no lure, I might have gone in search of temptation, for in a world where sins are apt to be ugly, a horse-race is so beautiful that if one loves beauty he can practise an aesthetic virtue by sinning in that sort. So I made myself a pretence of profit as well as pleasure, and in going to Doncaster I feigned the wish chiefly to compare its high event with that of Saratoga. I had no association with the place save horse-racing, and having missed Ascot and Derby Day, I took my final chance in pursuit of knowledge—I said to myself, “Not mere amusement”—and set out for Doncaster unburdened by the lightest fact concerning the place.
I
I learned nothing of it when there, but I have since learned, from divers trustworthy sources, that Doncaster is the Danum of Antoninus and the Dona Ceaster of the Saxons, and that it is not only on the line of the Northeastern Railway, but also on that famous Watling Street which from the earliest Saxon time has crossed the British continent from sea to sea, and seems to impress most of the cities north and south into a conformity with its line, like a map of the straightest American railway routes.