“You dog!” I protested.  “You clown!” He merely grinned.

Not to miss so interesting a denouement as the actual capture of this prodigy of the wilds, I was up early and off the following Sunday to Newark, where in Peter’s apartment in due time I found him, his rooms in a turmoil, he himself busy stuffing things into a bag, outside an automobile waiting and within it the staff photographer as well as several others, all grinning, and all of whom, as he informed me, were to assist in the great work of tracking, ambushing and, if possible, photographing the dread peril.

“Yes, well, who’s going to be him?” I insisted.

“Never mind!  Never mind!  Don’t be so inquisitive,” chortled Peter.  “A wild man has his rights and privileges, as well as any other.  Remember, I caution all of you to be respectful in his presence.  He’s very sensitive, and he doesn’t like newspapermen anyhow.  He’ll be photographed, and he’ll be wild.  That’s all you need to know.”

In due time we arrived at as comfortable an abode for a wild man as well might be.  It was near the old Essex and Morris Canal, not far from Boonton.  A charming clump of brush and rock was selected, and here a snapshot of a posse hunting, men peering cautiously from behind trees in groups and looking as though they were most eager to discover something, was made.  Then Peter, slipping away—­I suddenly saw him ambling toward us, hair upstanding, body smeared with black muck, daubs of white about the eyes, little tufts of wool about wrists and ankles and loins—­as good a figure of a wild man as one might wish, only not eight feet tall.

“Peter!” I said.  “How ridiculous!  You loon!”

“Have a care how you address me,” he replied with solemn dignity.  “A wild man is a wild man.  Our punctilio is not to be trifled with.  I am of the oldest, the most famous line of wild men extant.  Touch me not.”  He strode the grass with the air of a popular movie star, while he discussed with the art director and photographer the most terrifying and convincing attitudes of a wild man seen by accident and unconscious of his pursuers.

“But you’re not eight feet tall!” I interjected at one point.

“A small matter.  A small matter,” he replied airily.  “I will be in the picture.  Nothing easier.  We wild men, you know—­”

Some of the views were excellent, most striking.  He leered most terribly from arras of leaves or indicated fright or cunning.  The man was a good actor.  For years I retained and may still have somewhere a full set of the pictures as well as the double-page spread which followed the next week.

Well, the thing was appropriately discussed, as it should have been, but the wild man got away, as was feared.  He went into the nearby canal and washed away all his terror, or rather he vanished into the dim recesses of Peter’s memory.  He was only heard of a few times more in the papers, his supposed body being found in some town in northeast Pennsylvania—­or in the small item that was “telegraphed” from there.  As for Peter, he emerged from the canal, or from its banks, a cleaner if not a better man.  He was grinning, combing his hair, adjusting his tie.