Ferguson.

“But a man was walking with a limp from the building along the pavement on the far side of our road. It was a hot night, and he carried his overcoat upon his arm, and I saw that a conspicuous row of miniature medals with their coloured ribbons stretched across his left breast. We reached the kerb when he was only a few yards from us. I felt my father’s hand tremble suddenly upon my arm. I thought that he was on the point of turning away in flight. But since that would have been more noticeable, he just dropped his head so that the brim of his hat shadowed his face and strode swiftly past the man with the medals. That man only gave us a careless glance, and I heard my father draw a sigh of relief. But a few paces on the man with the medals stopped and looked back. Then he called out: ‘Ned! Ned!’ in a startled voice, and began to retrace, as fast as his limp would allow him, his steps towards us.

“My father whispered to me: ‘Take no notice, boy! Walk straight on,’ and in a moment dived into the silence of the street opposite. I turned my head after we had travelled a few yards in our new direction and I saw the man with the medals at the angle of the street peering after us as if he were undecided whether to follow us or not. There the incident ended, but it was—well—significant, wasn’t it?”

Mr. Ferguson was distinctly uncomfortable. A pair of very steady and watchful grey eyes were fixed upon his. He was being cross-examined and not clumsily, and by a boy; and all of this he fretfully resented. To do the cross-examining was his function in life, not the other fellow’s. Besides, how was he to answer that word significant? Such a good word! For it opened no glimpses of the questioner’s point of view and was a trap for the questioned.

“Was it significant?” he asked.

Paul suddenly smiled, and Mr. Ferguson was more perplexed than ever. The boy was not obtuse—that was clear. It was no less clear, then, that he attached some quite special significance of his own invention to the incident he had related. Monsieur Ravenel was in hiding—that’s what the incident signified. How had Paul missed it? What strange amulet was he wearing that saved him from the desolating truth?

“Did you ever read ‘Balaustion’s Adventure’?” Paul inquired, and Mr. Ferguson jumped.

“I wish you wouldn’t spring from one subject to another like that,” he answered, testily.

“I am on the 

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