The Japanese boy was still at work on the launch, and, hearing a step on the pier planking, he glanced up, then rose and asked the stranger his business.
"If you have business it must be at the house; the road is in the other direction," and Ijima pointed to the wood, but the stranger remained stubbornly on the edge of the pier. I now stepped out of the wood and walked down to the pier.
"What do you want here?" I demanded sharply.
The man touched his hat, smiled, and shook his head. The broad hand he lifted in salute was that of a laborer, and its brown back was tattooed. He belonged, I judged, to one of the dark Mediterranean races, and I tried him in Italian.
"These are private grounds; you will do well to leave here very quickly," I said.
I saw his eyes light as I spoke the words slowly and distinctly, but he waited until I had finished, then shook his head.
I was sure he had understood, but as I addressed him again, ordering him from the premises, he continued to shake his head and grin foolishly. Then I pointed toward the road.
"Go; and it will be best for you not to come here again!" I said, and, after saluting, he walked slowly away into the wood, with a sort of dogged insolence in his slightly swaying gait. At a nod from me Ijima stole after him while I waited, and in a few minutes the boy came back and reported that the man had passed the house and left the grounds by the carriage entrance, turning toward Annandale.
With my mind on Gillespie I put off in the launch, determined to study the lake geography. A mile from the pier I looked back and saw, rising above the green wood, the gray lines of Glenarm house; and farther west the miniature tower of the little chapel of St. Agatha's thrust itself through the trees. To the east lay Annandale village; to the northwest the summer colony of Port Annandale. I swung the boat toward the unknown north of this pretty lake, watching meanwhile its social marine--if I may use such a term--with new interest. Several smart sail-boats lounged before the wind--more ambitious craft than I imagined these waters boasted; the lake "tramps" on their ceaseless errands to and from the village whistled noisily; we passed a boy and girl in a canoe--a thing so pretty and graceful and so clean-cut in its workmanship that I turned to look after it. The girl was lazily plying the paddle; the boy, supported by a wealth of gay cushions, was thrumming a guitar. They glared at me resentfully as their cockle-shell wobbled in the wash of the launch.