The Argosy, Vol. 83 No. 1 — page 65: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HAMPTON OF darkly involved in mystery to sustain con- fidence, and whatever his motive had been in breaking and entering the Delroy house, the method was too high handed for toler- ation. Kingsale had, perhaps, as good a right to burglarious methods as Exmoor. Jerry decided to hold to his part of observer and keep hands off. He pulled the boat up to Two Hun- dred and Twelfth Street, turned again, and resumed his patrol. He laughed whimsically as he pictured the raider at his task, and was careful not to look too curiously at the craft as he passed it. His caution ceased, however, when there was a sudden agitated movement under the awning at the stern. A man sprang up, apparently from a concealed reclining chair or hammock, appeared to stop and listen to sounds from the cabin, and then darted around to the door on the side, burst it open, and rushed in. Jerry stopped rowing and sat in the drifting boat, blankly amazed. He was so near the deck that he had recognized the man, and it was Foxford, the bibulous young man of the adventure in the res- taurant. The houseboat “was now no _ lorger wrapped in silence. Loud voices, shouts, and sounds of a spirited encounter came from the cabin. Two figures came spin- ning through the door and revolved dizzily on the narrow side deck for an instant; then one of them shot over the rail and disappeared in a great splash of the drab river water. Jerry’s boat was well beyond the bows of the larger craft as the thing happened, and he grasped his oars and pulled across the bows, out of sight, before the excited man on the deck perceived him. He heard the door banged savagely, and on backing cautiously he found that the victor in the scrimmage had retired within and left the vanquished to shift for himself. A head bobbed up, with a pair of flut- tering, frantic hands, some thirty feet away,and Jerry turned his boat and pulled for the spot as the man disappeared again. THE HEIGHTS. 55 He waited, bending over the water, and the head came to the surface once more near the stern. He dropped his oars, scrambled aft, and seized the drowning man’s hair just in time. 3 In an instant he had him by the shoul- ders, and though he was inexperienced as a boatman he managed with a deal of tug- ging and tipping of the boat to haul the body aboard. He was not surprised to find that he had rescued Kingsale, and as he sat on a thwart, flushed and panting from the exertion, he could not repress a whimsical smile at the irony of things in general, —— CHAPTER XVI. PERSISTENT TRAILING. K INGSALE lay in the bottom of the boat, half senseless, but suffering more from his tussle with young Foxford than from near approach to drowning. He had been well nigh exhausted, it seemed, when he was thrown overboard, and his battle against the water had been feeble in conse- quence, but Jerry decided, upon examina- tion, that no great amount of water had been taken into his lungs. He rowed, now, for the nearest place that seemed to promise assistance: the old houseboat that was drawn up on the bank and used as a dwelling. He tied the boat to the commodious landing stage in front of the structure, and knocked on the door. A pleasant-faced woman responded and he told her briefly that he had pulled a man out of the river and needed help in reviving him. The woman was instantly solicitous. She called a young man from one of the inner rooms, and the latter went to the boat with Jerry, lifted the limp form from it and carried it into the house. The young man was a practised waterman, and he went at the task of resuscitation with the skill of one accustomed to river acci- | dents. Respiration was restored and the cold body was rubbed with alcohol until it NOOLKS COWMUC (C@)