a hand to his forehead.

“Evenin’, Muster Chater,” said the man. “’Tain’t of’en as we sees anything o’ you this side the way, sir.”

“Wrong house,” thought Philip Crowdy. “So much the better, perhaps; I am less likely to meet the real man, until I wish to do so.” Aloud he said, with a shrug of the shoulders—“Oh—anything for a change. Bring me some brandy, it can’t be worse than that at the other shop—and it may be better.”

“A deal better, Muster Chater, take my word for ’t,” replied the landlord, hurrying away to execute the order.

During the time that the stranger sat there, and had leisure to look about him, he became aware of one unpleasant fact. He saw that, however great might be their respect for the mere position of the man they supposed him to be, there was a curious resentment at his presence, and a distrust of him personally, which was not to be disguised. When, having leisurely drunk his brandy, he left the place, to their evident relief, and came again out into the darkness of the village street, he expressed the opinion to himself, in one emphatic phrase, that Dandy Chater was a bad lot.

In the strangeness of his position, and in his uncertainty as to what future course he was to take, his interview with the girl, on the road outside the village, had gone, for the time, clean out of his mind; when he looked at his watch, he discovered, to his dismay, that it was nearly eight o’clock. More than that, he did not even know where the wood of which she had spoken was situated, and he dared not ask the way to it.

Trusting to blind chance to guide him, and looking about anxiously over the flat landscape, for anything at all answering the description of a mill, or even of a wood, he lost more valuable time still; and at last, in sheer desperation, remembering that the last train for London started at a few minutes to the hour of nine, he set off, at a rapid rate, for the railway station—running along the road now and then, in his anxiety not to miss it.

“If the real Dandy Chater has kept his promise to the girl, even so far as taking her to London is concerned,” he muttered, as he ran on, “they’ve met in the wood long ago, and are well on their way to the station. I’ll follow them; that’s the best course. Besides—I don’t like the look of that business with the girl; her eyes seem to haunt me somehow. If I miss them at the station, I can at least go on to that place she mentioned at Woolwich, and keep my eye on the man.”

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