“What did you put in?” she demanded.

I enumerated the articles as best I could.  And when I had finished, she said,

“And I am filling this with the things you have forgotten.”

I lost no time in telling her what I had overheard the night before, and that the detective was gone from his tent.  She stopped her packing and looked at me in concern.

“He is probably watching us,” she said.  “Do you think we had better go?”

I thought it could do no harm.  “If we are followed,” said I, “all we have to do is to turn back.”

Miss Trevor came out as I spoke, and our conductor appeared, bending under the hamper.  I shouldered some blankets and the basket, and we started.  We followed a rough path, evidently cut by a camping party in some past season, but now overgrown.  The Fraction marched ahead, and I formed the rear guard.  Several times it seemed to me as though someone were pushing after us, and more than once we halted.  I put down the basket and went back to reconnoitre.  Once I believed I saw a figure flitting in the gray light, but I set it down to my imagination.

Finally we reached a brook, sneaking along beneath the underbrush as though fearing to show itself, and we followed its course.  Branches lashed our faces and brambles tore our clothes.  And then, as the sunlight was filtering through and turning the brook from blue to crystal, we came upon the Celebrity.  He was seated in a little open space on the bank, apparently careless of capture.  He did not even rise at our approach.  His face showed the effect of a sleepless night, and wore an expression inimical to all mankind.  The conductor threw his bundle on the bank and laid his hand on the Celebrity’s shoulder.

“Halloa, old man!” said he, cheerily.  “You must have had a hard night of it.  But we couldn’t make you any sooner, because that hawk of an officer had his eye on us.”

The Celebrity shook himself free.  And in place of the gratitude for which the Fraction had looked, and which he had every reason to expect, he got something different.

“This outrage has gone far enough,” said the Celebrity, with a terrible calmness.  The Fraction was a man of the world.

“Come, come, old chap!” he said soothingly, “don’t cut up.  We’ll make things a little more homelike here.”  And he pulled a bottle from the depths of the hamper.  “This will brace you up.”

He picked up the hamper and disappeared into the place of retention, while the Celebrity threw the bottle into the brush.  And just then (may I be forgiven if I am imaginative!) I heard a human laugh come from that direction.  In the casting of that bottle the Celebrity had given vent to some of the feelings he had been collecting overnight, and it must have carried about thirty yards.  I dived after it like a retriever puppy for a stone; but the bottle was gone!  Perhaps I could say more, but it doesn’t do to believe in yourself too thoroughly when you get up early.  I had nothing to say when I returned.