the men from the morgue carried out
the lifeless body.

CHAPTER III

THE FISHERMAN

From a little green book, which, from the evidence of its worn covers,
seemed to have been much read, the tall, military-appearing occupant of
a middle seat in the parlor car of the express to Colchester scanned
again this passage:

"And if you rove for perch with a minnow, then it is best to be alive,
you sticking your hook through his back fin, or a minnow with the hook
in his upper lip, and letting him swim up and down about mid-water, or
a little lower, and you still keeping him about that depth with a cork,
which ought to be a very little one; and the way you are to fish for
perch with a small frog--"

"Ah-a-a-a!"

It was a long-drawn exclamation of anticipatory delight, and into the
eyes of the military-looking traveler there appeared a soft and gentle
light, as though, in fancy, he could look off across sunlit meadows to
a stream sparkling beneath a blue sky, white-studded with fleecy
clouds, where there was a soft carpet of green grass, shaded by a noble
oak under which he might lounge and listen to the wind rustling the
newly-born leaves.

"Ah-a-a-a!"

"Beg pardon, sir, but I--"

"What?"

The military-appearing man sat up with a jerk into sudden stiffness,
while the soft light died out of his eyes.

"New York papers?"

"Don't want the New York papers--any of them!"

The man, after a swift glance from his green-covered book, again let
his eyes seek its pages. The ghost of a smile flickered around his
lips.

"Chicago, then. The latest--"

". . . your hook being fastened through the skin of his leg, toward the
upper part of it; and lastly I will give you--"

"Something livelier in the way of reading, sir, if you wish it!" broke
in the voice of the newsboy who had stopped beside the parlor-car chair
of the military-looking traveler, interrupting the reading of the
little green-covered book. "I have a new detective story--"

"Look here! If you interrupt me again when I'm reading my Izaak Walton
I'll have you put off the train! Gad! I will, sir, if I have to do it
myself!"

The military-appearing traveler snapped the green book against the palm
of one hand with a report like that of a pistol, thereby causing an old
lady, asleep in a chair across the aisle, to awaken with a start.

"Are we in? Have we arrived? Is this Colchester?" she asked, sitting
up and looking about in startled surprise, h