After some hesitation, the other agreed. Average Jones sat down to the composition of an epistle, which should be sufficiently imperative without being too alarming. Having completed this delicate task to his satisfaction he handed the result to Hollins. “If you haven’t already struck off a line, you might do so,” he suggested. “I’ve asked the Farleys for a print of it; and I fancy they’ll be sending for one.” Leaving the shop he went direct to a telegraph office, whence he dispatched two messages to Harwick. One was to the Reverend Peter Prentice, the other was to the local chief of police. On the following afternoon Mr. Prentice trembling in the anteroom of the Ad-Visor’s. With the briefest word of greeting Average Jones led him into his private office, where a clear-eyed boy, with his head swathed in bandages sat waiting. As the Ad-Visor closed the door after him, he heard the breathless, boyish “Hello, father,” merged in the broken cry of the Reverend Peter Prentice. Five minutes he gave father and son. When he returned to the room, carrying a loose roll of reddish paper, he was followed by a strange couple. The woman was plumply muscular. Her attractive face was both defiant and uneasy. Behind her strode a wiry man of forty. His chief claim to notice lay in an outrageously fancy waistcoat, which was ill-matched with his sober, commonplace, “pepper-and-salt” suit. “Mr. and Mrs. Farley, the Reverend Mr. Prentice,” said Average Jones in introduction. “The strangers in the wagon?” asked the clergyman quickly. “The same,” admitted the woman briefly. The Reverend Mr. Prentice turned upon Farley. “Why did you want to steal my boy away?” he demanded. “Didn’t want to. Had to,” replied that gentleman succinctly. “Let’s do this in order,” suggested Average Jones. “The principal actor’s story first. Speak up, Bailey.” “Don’t know my own story,” said the boy with a grin. “Only part of it. Mrs. Farley’s been awful good to me, takin’ care of me an’ all that. But she wouldn’t tell me how I got hurt or where I was when I woke up.” “Naturally. Well, we must piece it out among us. Now, Bailey, you were working over your reel the night the meteor fell, when—” “What meteor? I don’t know anything about a meteor.” “Of course you don’t,” said Average Jones laughing. “Stupid of me. For the moment I had forgotten that you were out of the world then. Well, about nine o’clock of the night you got the reel, you looked out of your window and saw a queer light over at the Tuxall place.” “That’s right. But say, Mr. Jones, how do you know about the light?” “What else but a light could you have seen, on a pitch-black night?” counter-questioned Average Jones with a smile. “And it must have been something unusual, or you wouldn’t have dropped everything to go to it.” “That’s what!” corroborated the boy. “A kind of flame shot up from the ground. Then it spread a little. Then it went out. And there were people running around it.”