So that
it was not many hours later when the first sensation of that strange
day came upon them. It came in the form of a young man with light
hair and a candid expression, who came sculling down the river and
disembarked at the landing stage. It was, in fact, no other than Mr.
Harold March, whose journey had begun far away up the river in the
earliest hours of that day. He arrived late in the afternoon, having
stopped for tea in a large riverside town, and he had a pink evening
paper sticking out of his pocket. He fell on the riverside garden
like a quiet and well-behaved thunderbolt, but he was a thunderbolt
without knowing it.
The first exchange of salutations and introductions was commonplace
enough, and consisted, indeed, of the inevitable repetition of
excuses for the eccentric seclusion of the host. He had gone fishing
again, of course, and must not be disturbed till the appointed hour,
though he sat within a stone's throw of where they stood.
"You see it's his only hobby," observed Harker, apologetically,
"and, after all, it's his own house; and he's very hospitable in
other ways."
"I'm rather afraid," said Fisher, in a lower voice, "that it's
becoming more of a mania than a hobby. I know how it is when a man
of that age begins to collect things, if it's only collecting those
rotten little river fish.
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