Then, before anybody had had time to notice the entry of Amory and Edgar Strong, an extraordinary, not to say a regrettable thing occurred. Mr. Eli Crabtree had spent the last twenty minutes in going deliberately from one person to another, often thrusting himself unceremoniously between two people already engaged in conversation, and in subjecting them to questionings that had become less and less reticent the further he had passed round the room. And it appeared that this collier who had forgotten his Davy had yet another lamp with him--the lamp of his own narrow intelligence and inalienable, if worthless, experience. By the help of that darkness within him that he mistook for light, he had added inference to inference and conclusion to conclusion. Cosimo--Wilkinson--Walter Wyron--Brimby--the Balliol men--the young students of the McGrath--he had missed not one of them; but none knew the portent of his tour of the studio until he had reached the hearth again. Then he was seen to be standing with his hands behind him, as if calmly summing them up. "By--Gow!" he said half to himself, his football-cropped head moving this way and that and his eyes blinking rapidly as he sought somebody to address. Then, all in a moment, he ceased his attempt to single out one more than another, and was addressing them in the lump, for all the world as if he had been allowed the entrée of the house, not as a high and memorable privilege and in order that he might learn something he had never suspected before, but as if, finding himself there, _he_ might as well tell _them_ a thing or two while he was about it. And though his astonishment at what he had seen might well have rendered him dumb, his good temper did not for an instant forsake him. "By--Gow!" he said again. "But this _is_ a menagerie, an' reight!" The instantaneous dead silence and turn of every head might have disconcerted a prophet, but they made not the slightest impression on Mr. Crabtree. "It _is_ a menagerie!" he continued superbly. "Ding, if onnybody'd told me I wadn't ha' believed 'em!--Let's see how monny of ye there is----" And calmly he began to count them. "Fowerteen--fifteen--sixteen countin' them two 'at's just come in an' leavin' out t' barns. Sixteen of ye, grown men an' women, an' not a single one of ye knows ye're born! Nay, it's cappin'!--Him wi' his Salmagundys or whativver he calls 'em, an' niver been on Douglas Head!--T' maister here, 'at doesn't know what a back-to-back is, I'se warrant!--An' yon chap--," Mr. Crabtree's forefinger was straight as a pistol between Mr. Brimby's eyes, "--'at says there's a deeal to be said o' both sides an'll be having his pocket'ankercher out in a minute!--An' these young men thro' t' Collidge!--Nay, if it doesn't beat all! I ne'er thowt to live to see t' day!----" And he made a T-t-t-ing with his tongue on his palate, while his sharp little eyes looked on them all with amusement and pity.