"It's rum, isn't it?" said Ranny. He was apparently absorbed in tying the strings of his sleeping-suit into loops of absolutely even length. "But he always _was_ that mysterious kind of bird." He began to step slowly backward as he buttoned up his jacket. Then, by way of throwing off the care that oppressed him, and lightening somewhat Mr. Ponting's burden, he ran forward and took a flying leap over the Baby's cot into his own bed. Mr. Ponting looked, if anything, a little graver. "I wouldn't do that, if I were you," he said. "Why not?" said Ranny over his blankets, snuggling comfortably. "Oh, I don't know," said Mr. Ponting, vaguely. In a day or two Ranny himself knew. His arrangements had carried him well on into October. In the last week of that month, on a Tuesday evening, he appeared at the Regent Street Polytechnic, where he had not been seen since far back in the last year. It was not at the Gymnasium that he now presented himself, but at the door of that room where every Tuesday evening, from seven-thirty to eight-thirty, a qualified practitioner was in attendance. It was the first time that Ransome had availed himself of this privilege conferred on him by the Poly. He said he wouldn't keep the medical man a minute. But the medical man kept Ranny many minutes, thumping, sounding, intimately and extensively overhauling him. For more minutes than Ranny at all liked, he played about him with a stethoscope. Then he fired off what Ranny supposed to be the usual questions. "Had any shock, worry, or excitement lately? "Been overdoing it in any way? "Gone in much for athletics?" Ranny replied with regret that it was more than three years since he had last run in the Wandsworth Hurdle Race. He was then told that he must avoid all shock, worry, or excitement. He mustn't overdo it. He must drop his hurdle-racing. He mustn't bicycle uphill, or against the wind; he mustn't jump; he mustn't run-- "Not even to catch a train?" "Not to catch anything." And the doctor gave him a prescription that ran: /P Sodae Bicarb., one dram. Tinct. Strophanthi, two drams-- P/ He remembered. That was the stuff he'd measured for old Mr. Beasley's heart mixture. It was the stuff that Ponting said his father was taking now. If any one had told him three years ago that his heart was rocky he'd have told them where to go to. It had been as sound as a bell when he entered for the Poly. Gym. Well, he supposed that was about the finishing touch--if they wanted to do the thing in style. He went slowly over Wandsworth Bridge and up the High Street, dejected, under the autumn moon that had once watched his glad sprinting. CHAPTER XXVII And in all this time he had not heard again from Violet, nor had he written to her. Then--it was in the first week of November--Violet wrote.