Edward Lynde laughed again, but not heartily. He felt that this marble
ship was a conception of high humor and was not without its pathetic
element. The whimsicality of the idea amused him, but the sad
earnestness of the nervous, unstrung visionary at his side moved his
compassion.

"Dear me," he mused, "may be all of us are more or less engaged in
planning a marble ship, and perhaps the happiest are those who, like
this poor soul, never awake from their delusion. Matrimony was uncle
David's marble ship--he launched his! Have I one on the ways, I wonder?"

Lynde broke with a shock from his brief abstraction. His companion had
disappeared, and with him the saddle and valise. Lynde threw a hasty
glance up the street, and started in pursuit of the naval-architect, who
was running with incredible swiftness and bearing the saddle on his head
with as much ease as if it had been a feather.

The distance between the two men, some sixty or seventy yards, was not
the disadvantage that made pursuit seem hopeless. Lynde had eaten almost
nothing since the previous noon; he had been carrying that cumbersome
saddle for the last two or three hours; he was out of breath, and it was
impossible to do much running in his heavy riding-boots. The other man,
on the contrary, appeared perfectly fresh; he wore light shoes, and had
not a superfluous ounce of flesh to carry. He was all bone and sinew;
the saddle resting upon his head was hardly an impediment to him. Lynde,
however, was not going to be vanquished without a struggle; though he
recognized the futility of pursuit, he pushed on doggedly. A certain
tenacious quality in the young man imperatively demanded this of him.

"The rascal has made off with my dinner," he muttered between his