say, for I personally have not seen
the animal, but I have a witness who has, and there are many
who affirm that they have seen the creature. You will
naturally say that my statement amounts to nothing; but when
your representative arrives, if he be free from prejudice, I
expect his reports to you concerning this sea-biped will
confirm the solemn statements of a witness I _know_ to be
unimpeachable.

"Yours truly, BURTON HALYARD.

"BLACK HARBOR."

"Well," I said, after a moment's thought, "here goes for the
wild-goose chase."

"Wild auk, you mean," said Professor Farrago, shaking hands with me.
"You will start to-night, won't you?"

"Yes, but Heaven knows how I'm ever going to land in this man
Halyard's door-yard. Good-bye!"

"About that sea-biped--" began Professor Farrago, shyly.

"Oh, don't!" I said; "I can swallow the auks, feathers and claws, but
if this fellow Halyard is hinting he's seen an amphibious creature
resembling a man--"

"--Or a woman," said the professor, cautiously.

I retired, disgusted, my faith shaken in the mental vigor of Professor
Farrago.

II

The three days' voyage by boat and rail was irksome. I bought my kit
at Sainte Croix, on the Central Pacific Railroad, and on June 1st I
began the last stage of my journey _via_ the Sainte Isole broad-gauge,
arriving in the wilderness by daylight. A tedious forced march by
blazed trail, freshly spotted on the wrong side, of course, brought me
to the northern terminus of the rusty, narrow-gauge lumber railway
which runs from the heart of the hushed pine wilderness to the sea.

Already a long train of battered flat-cars, piled with sluice-props
and roughly hewn sleepers, was moving slowly off into the brooding
forest gloom, when I came in sight of the track; but I developed a
gratifying and unexpected burst of speed, shouting all the while. The
train stopped; I swung myself aboard the last car, where a pleasant
young fellow was sitting on the rear brake, chewing spruce and reading
a letter.

"Come aboard, sir," he said, looking up with a smile; "I guess you're
the man in a hurry."

"I'm looking for a man named Halyard," I said, dropping rifle and
knapsack on the fresh-cut, fragrant pile of pine. "Are you Halyard?"

"No, I'm Francis Lee, bossing the mica pit at Port-of-Waves," he
replied, "but this letter is from Halyard, asking me to look out for a
man in a hurry from Bronx Park, New York."