But either I misjudged the distance he was ahead of me or else he could row far better than I expected. In my haste I had paddled straight out into the lake, forgetting for a moment or so that the shore took a wide curve. When I remembered that, it was to discover the man had rowed straight across this half circle, and I had to turn to the shore. This gave him several extra minutes, and though, when he ran his boat up on the shore, I was only a few feet away, yet it gave the time he needed. He must have discovered just before he beached his boat that I was behind him. In fact I was so close that when he rose and jumped to the shore, I could partly see his figure—an indistinct mass in the darkness. He half turned, jumped from his boat, partly stumbled, only to gather himself and run away in the darkness. The next second my canoe crashed on the beach, half throwing me to my knees. Jumping from it, I set out in the direction the man had taken. We were on some one's lawn, for I saw the figure darting ahead of me, thrown into reflection for a moment by the lights of a house. Then it went through a hedge and was lost to sight. I ran over the grass, through the opening in the hedge, and then discovered that I was on Carter's land. As I glimpsed the running figure ahead, I heard Trouble, who was locked in the garage, give a sudden bark, and then commence to bark incessantly. I wished with all my heart the dog was loose, but there was not time to open the garage door. When I ran around the front of Carter's house, the man was not in sight. In front of me was another hedge, to my left the lake, and to my right the lawn ran to the street. In this direction the street lights made it possible to see that there was no one there. Deciding the man had gone through the hedge, I ran down the path, and the next second was on the lawn which belonged to the minister. But I could see no one, and though there was a light in the rectory, no running figure crossed the reflection. The man was gone, but where? I stopped running, to walk up the slight incline which led to the church. Frankly I was puzzled. There had not been time for him to have gone very far. The street lights gave enough illumination to at least have allowed me to have seen if any running figure was ahead of me. But no one was in sight. Puzzled, I went rather slowly across the grass and came to the dark shadow made by the wall of the church. As I stood silent a moment, I cast my eyes at the dense mass of the tower, which divided the rectory from the church proper. It was not a very high tower, and its top was only a few feet above the roof of the church. Then I went toward the street, keeping in the shadow, and when I reached the tower itself, found to my surprise that the door at the foot was open.