He's
so used to my settled ways that I don't think he'll suspect
anything till he finds my note. I wonder what kind of story
Mrs. McNally will tell!"
"How about putting him off the scent?" he said. "Give me your
handkerchief."
I did so. He hopped nimbly out, ran back down the hill (he
was a spry little person in spite of his bald crown), and
dropped the handkerchief on the Walton Road about a hundred
feet beyond the fork. Then he followed me up the slope.
"There," he said, grinning like a kid, "that'll fool him. The
Sage of Redfield will undoubtedly follow a false spoor and the
criminals will win a good start. But I'm afraid it's rather
easy to follow a craft as unusual as Parnassus."
"Tell me how you manage the thing," I said. "Do you really
make it pay?" We halted at the top of the hill to give
Pegasus a breathing space. The terrier lay down in the dust
and watched us gravely. Mr. Mifflin pulled out a pipe and
begged my permission to smoke.
"It's rather comical how I first got into it," he said. "I
was a school teacher down in Maryland. I'd been plugging away
in a country school for years, on a starvation salary. I was
trying to support an invalid mother, and put by something in
case of storms.
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