“That is all very well in cases of doubt.  But here you have the evidences of wrong-doing directly before you.”

Three dishes were taken up, dried, and put down before she answered me.  I threw pebbles into the brook, and wished I had held my tongue.

“What evidence?” inquired she.  “Well,” said I, “I must finish, I suppose.  I had a notion you knew of what I inferred.  First, let me say that I have no desire to prejudice you against a person whom you admire.”

“Impossible.”

Something in her tone made me look up.

“Very good, then,” I answered.  “I, for one, can have no use for a man who devotes himself to a girl long enough to win her affections, and then deserts her with as little compunction as a dog does a rat it has shaken.  And that is how your Celebrity treated Miss Trevor.”

“But Miss Trevor has recovered, I believe,” said Miss Thorn.

I began to feel a deep, but helpless, insecurity.

“Happily, yes,” I assented.

“Thanks to an excellent physician.”

A smile twitched the corners of her mouth, as though she enjoyed my discomfiture.  I remarked for the fiftieth time how strong her face was, with its generous lines and clearly moulded features.  And a suspicion entered my soul.

“At any rate,” I said, with a laugh, “the Celebrity has got himself into no end of a predicament now.  He may go back to New York in custody.”

“I thought you incapable of resentment, Mr. Crocker.  How mean of you to deny him!”

“It can do no harm,” I answered; “a little lesson in the dangers of incognito may be salutary.  I wish it were a little lesson in the dangers of something else.”

The color mounted to her face as she resumed her occupation.

“I am afraid you are a very wicked man,” she said.

Before I could reply there came a scuffling sound from the bank above us, and the snapping of branches and twigs.  It was Mr. Cooke.  His descent, the personal conduction of which he lost half-way down, was irregular and spasmodic, and a rude concussion at the bottom knocked off a choice bit of profanity which was balanced on the tip of his tongue.

“Tobogganing is a little out of season,” said his niece, laughing heartily.

Mr. Cooke brushed himself off, picked up the glasses which he had dropped in his flight and pushed them into my hands.  Then he pointed lakeward with bulging eyes.

“Crocker, old man,” he said in a loud whisper, “they tell me that is an Asquith cat-boat.”

I followed his finger and saw for the first time a sail-boat headed for the island, then about two miles off shore.  I raised the glasses.

“Yes,” I said, “the Scimitar.”

“That’s what Farrar said,” cried he.

“And what about it?” I asked.

“What about it?” he ejaculated.  “Why, it’s a detective come for Allen.  I knew sure as hell if they got as far as Asquith they wouldn’t stop there.  And that’s the fastest sail-boat he could hire there, isn’t it?”