H. Robinson was rolled off his legs, and for a few minutes he had a confused vision of a sky hung with Captain Whites, and an earth gay with the same decorations. There were Captain Whites to the right of him, Captain Whites to the left of him, Captain Whites behind and before, and each figure was frisking, jumping, rolling up its sleeves, and making a pretence of spitting on its hands. The figures tapped him, pushed him, bowled him over, helped him up, but kept him steadfastly moving in the direction of the big iron gates. A kind of warning chant accompanied the dance, "Don't come back--better stay away," and as the chant grew louder some of its echoes floated to the ears of a quartette of people emerging from the wood. Miss Gastonguay was escorting her guests to the terminus of the car line, and at a sudden exclamation from Derrice she turned her eyes toward the enormously fat man being propelled like a rubber ball down the gravelled road. A slim figure leaped about it. Sometimes the figure was beside the ball, sometimes beyond it,--running at it, trundling it in the gutter, helping it out again, guiding it in the middle of the road, incommoding it in every possible way, yet keeping it moving. A hat and a cane were accompanying articles, and went spinning through the air like jugglers' toys. "Has that quirky captain gone crazy?" exclaimed Miss Gastonguay. No one spoke but Mrs. White. "If that man is getting kicked," she observed, with deliberation, "and Micah's doing it, he deserves a kicking." Her sentiments were clear, though the construction of her sentence was slightly equivocal, and without contradiction her hearers continued to watch the ball play until the ball arrived at its destination, and was caught up and whirled away by a car into which it was politely assisted by its attendant demon. Then they remained spectators of a joyful hornpipe danced by the superintendent of the sardine factories, who joyously communed with himself, "First round with H. R. I lead and force him from ring,--what'll be the end of the bout?" CHAPTER XXIX. NEWS OF THE WANDERER. Dog-days had come, and on one of the days when the dogstar rose and set most persistently with the sun Miss Gastonguay was strolling toward the avenue gates. The day had been too hot to walk, too hot to ride. Now at approaching evening she felt restless, and looking searchingly at the road wished that Derrice or her now frequent visitor, Captain White, would come to see her. Their well-known figures were not in sight. Only a young man on a bicycle was coming down the road. He was barely moving, and, with a thought of the heat of the evening, Miss Gastonguay murmured a listless, "Simpleton." He was the first bicyclist that she had seen for three days and, as he drew near, she examined him curiously.