Page:The Ball and the Cross.djvu/245

the hill behind him. Turnbull had already ducked under the intoxicated gentleman’s elbow and fled far in front.

“No, but look here,” said Mr. Wilkinson, enthusiastically running after MacIan and catching him by the sleeve of his coat. “If you want to hurry you should take a yacht, and if—” he said, with a burst of rationality, like one leaping to a further point in logic—“if you want a yacht—you can have mine.”

Evan pulled up abruptly and looked back at him. “We are really in the devil of a hurry,” he said, “and if you really have a yacht, the truth is that we would give our ears for it.”

“You’ll find it in harbour,” said Wilkinson, struggling with his speech. “Left side of harbour—called Gibson Girl—can’t think why, old fellow, I never lent it you before.”

With these words the benevolent Mr. Wilkinson fell flat on his face in the road, but continued to laugh softly, and turned toward his flying companion a face of peculiar peace and benignity. Evan’s mind went through a crisis of instantaneous casuistry, in which it may be that he decided wrongly; but about how he decided his biographer can profess no doubt. Two minutes