LIONEL CLARENCE ESCAPES
171
He was plied with many questions as to what had possessed him to run away in that fashion, and at just what stage he had come back to his senses again, and just how he had fallen into his miraculous knowledge of the art of swimming.
But to all these questions the sleepy patient gave only vague and wandering answers. He had no desire to discredit the delirium tradition, which was given new twists and turns as it traveled from household to household. It was discussed and amended and contradicted, and in time even ascended to the dignity of one of those highly abstruse and quite unsolvable psychological problems [1] over which the more
- ↑ Another equally entrancing problem, which long kept Chamboro at its wits' end, was the question as to how three small sun-fish found their inexplicable way into one of the freshly dug post-holes of Judge Eby's cow-pasture. Some held that these three fish came from subterranean sources; others just as heatedly maintained that pluvial deposit explained their presence, while still others vacillated between scratching their heads in utter bewilderment and half-heartedly believing that some overburdened kingfisher had dropped them in flight. The simple truth of the matter was that the tight-lipped and unbetraying Lonely had dumped the three fish from his bait-pail into the post-hole, on his way home from the river.
