“Remember, I’m taking this sentence in vacuo, as it were. I don’t know who said it or what the occasion was. Normally a sentence belongs in the framework of a situation.”

“I see. What assumptions do you want to make?”

“For one thing, I want to assume that the intention was not frivolous, that the speaker is referring to a walk that was actually taken, and that the purpose of the walk was not to win a bet or something of that sort.”

“That seems reasonable enough,” I said.

“And I also want to assume that the locale of the walk is here.”

“You mean here in Fairfield?”

“Not necessarily. I mean in this general section of the country.”

“Fair enough.”

“Then, if you grant those assumptions, you’ll have to accept my last inference that the speaker is no athlete or outdoorsman.”

“Well all right. Go on.”

“Then my next inference is that the walk was taken very late at night or very early in the morning — say, between midnight and five or six in the morning.”

“How do you figure that one?” I asked.

“Consider the distance — nine miles. We’re in a fairly well populated section. Take any road and you’ll find a community of some sort in less than nine miles. Hadley is five miles away, Hadley Falls is seven and a half, Goreton is eleven, but East Goreton is only eight, and you strike East Goreton before you come to Goreton. There is local train service along the Goreton road and bus service along the others. All the highways are pretty well traveled. Would anyone have to walk nine miles in a rain unless it were late at night when no buses or trains were running and when the few automobiles that were out would hesitate to pick up a stranger on the highway?”

“He might not have wanted to be seen,” I suggested.

Nicky smiled pityingly. “You think he would be less noticeable trudging along the highway than he would be riding in a public conveyance where everyone is usually absorbed in his newspaper?”