“Mystery to me, all the same,” said the Colonel frowning. “Wonder whether he’ll ever clear it up.” But that part of the mystery was not to be cleared up until many other curious things had come to pass.
Away on another part of the slope Hilary Pierce, new lighted on the earth like the herald Mercury, leapt down into a red hollow of the quarry and came towards Joan Hardy with uplifted arms.
“This is no time for false modesty,” he said. “It is the hour, and I come to you covered with glory——”
“You come covered with mud,” she said smiling, “and it’s that horrible red mud that takes so long to dry. It’s no use trying to brush it till——”
“I bring you the Golden Fleece, or at any rate the Golden Pig-Skin,” he cried in lyric ecstasy. “I have endured the labours; I have achieved the quest. I h
