oroughfares. In summer some pitch, more or less
perfect, waits for him in suburban playing fields; and the River knows
him, at Battersea, at Chelsea, at Hammersmith, and at Wandsworth, the
River knows him as he is, the indomitable and impassioned worshiper of
the body and the earth.

And if the moon sees him sometimes haggard, panting, though indomitable,
though impassioned, reeling on the last lap of his last mile, and
limping through Wandsworth High Street home to the house of the weedy
pharmaceutical chemist his father, if the moon sees Ransome, why, the
Moon is a lady, and she does not tell.

* * * * *

If you asked him what he did it for, he would say you did it because it
kept you fit, also (if you pressed him) because it kept you decent.

And to know how right he was you had only to look at him, escaped from
his cage; you had only to follow his progress through the lighted
streets and observe his unbending behavior before the salutations of the
night. His fitness, combined with his decency, made him a wonder, a
desire, and a despair. Slender and upright, immaculately high-collared,
his thin serge suit molded by his sheer muscular development to the
semblance of perfection, Ranny was a mark for loitering feet and
wandering eyes. Ranny was brown-faced and brown-haired; he had brown
eyes made clear with a strain of gray, rather narrow eyes, ever so
slightly tilted, narrowing still, and lengthening, as with humor, at the
outer corners. There was humor in his mouth, wide but fine, that tilted
slightly upward when he spoke. There was humor even in his nose with its
subtle curve, the slender length of its bridge, and its tip, wide
spread, and like his mouth and eyes, slightly uptilted.

Ranny, in short, was fascinating. And at every turn his mysterious
decency betrayed the promise of his charm.

* * * * *

It was Fred Booty, his friend and companion of the pen, who first put
him in the right way, discerning in him a fine original genius for
adventure.

For when Ranny's mother said he was that venturesome, she meant that he
was fond, fantastically and violently fond of danger, of adventure. His
cunning in this matter beat her clean--how he found the things to do he
did do; the things, the frightful things he did about the house with
bannisters and windows, of which she knew. As for the things he found to
do with bicycles on Wandsworth Common and Putne