ridge he made a
leap at it and hung, with his legs dangling, letting the boat float
away from under him. March had a momentary vision of two black
kicking legs; then of one black kicking leg; and then of nothing
except the eddying stream and the long perspective of the wall. But
whenever he thought of it again, long afterward, when he understood
the story in which it figured, it was always fixed in that one
fantastic shape--as if those wild legs were a grotesque graven
ornament of the bridge itself, in the manner of a gargoyle. At the
moment he merely passed, staring, down the stream. He could see no
flying figure on the bridge, so it must have already fled; but he
was half conscious of some faint significance in the fact that among
the trees round the bridgehead opposite the wall he saw a lamp-post;
and, beside the lamp-post, the broad blue back of an unconscious
policeman.

Even before reaching the shrine of his political pilgrimage he had
many other things to think of besides the odd incident of the
bridge; for the management of a boat by a solitary man was not
always easy even on such a solitary stream. And indeed it was only
by an unforeseen accident that he was solitary. The boat had been
purchased and the whole expedition planned in conjunction with a
friend, who had at the last moment been forced to alter all his
arrangements. Harold March was to have traveled with his friend
Horne Fisher on that inland voyage to Willowood Place, where the
Prime Minister was a guest at the moment. More and more people were
hearing of Harold March, for his striking political articles were
opening to him the doors of larger and larger salons; but he had
never met the Prime Minister yet. Scarcely anybody among the general
public had ever heard of Horne Fisher; but he had known the Prime
Minister all his life. For these reasons, had the two taken the
projected journey together, March might have been slightly disposed
to hasten it and Fisher vaguely content to lengthen it out. For
Fisher was one of those people who are born knowing the Prime
Minister. The knowledge seemed to have no very exhilarant effect,
and in his case bore some resemblance to being born tired. But he
was distinctly annoyed to receive, just as he was doing a little
light packing of fishing tackle and cigars for the journey, a
telegram from Willowood asking him to come down at once by train, as
the Prime Minister had to leave that night. Fisher knew that his
fri