hark back with shuddering horror to the strange events on the
Pullman car Ontario, between Washington and Pittsburg, on the night
of September ninth, last.

McKnight could tell the story a great deal better than I, although
he can not spell three consecutive words correctly. But, while he
has imagination and humor, he is lazy.

"It didn't happen to me, anyhow," he protested, when I put it up to
him. "And nobody cares for second-hand thrills. Besides, you want
the unvarnished and ungarnished truth, and I'm no hand for that.
I'm a lawyer."

So am I, although there have been times when my assumption in that
particular has been disputed. I am unmarried, and just old enough
to dance with the grown-up little sisters of the girls I used to
know. I am fond of outdoors, prefer horses to the aforesaid
grown-up little sisters, am without sentiment (am crossed out and
was substituted.-Ed.) and completely ruled and frequently routed by
my housekeeper, an elderly widow.

In fact, of all the men of my acquaintance, I was probably the most
prosaic, the least adventurous, the one man in a hundred who would
be likely to go without a deviation from the normal through the
orderly procession of the seasons, summer suits to winter flannels,
golf to bridge.

So it was a queer freak of the demons of chance to perch on my
unsusceptible thirty-year-old chest, tie me up with a crime, ticket
me with a love affair, and start me on that sensational and not