Until he had eaten he felt he could not endure the sound of his own voice repeating what had already become a tiresome stereotyped formula; “You haven’t I suppose seen or heard anything during the last two days of a small boy—little chap of about thirteen—wandering about? He’s a sturdy resolute little fellow with a high colour, short wiry hair, rather dark....” The White Hart at Crayminster, after some negotiations, produced mutton cutlets and Australian hock. As he sat at his meal in the small ambiguous respectable dining-room of the inn—adorned with framed and glazed beer advertisements, crinkled paper fringes and insincere sporting prints—he became aware of a murmurous confabulation going on in the bar parlour. It must certainly he felt be the bar parlour.... He could not hear distinctly, and yet it seemed to him that the conversational style of Crayminster was abnormally rich in expletive. And the tone was odd. It had a steadfast quality of commination. He brushed off a crumb from his jacket, lit a cigarette and stepped across the passage to put his hopeless questions. The talk ceased abruptly at his appearance. It was one of those deep-toned bar parlours that are so infinitely more pleasant to the eye than the tawdry decorations of the genteel accommodation. It was brown with a trimming of green paper hops and it had a mirror and glass shelves sustaining bottles and tankards. Six or seven individuals were sitting about the room. They had a numerous effect. There was a man in very light floury tweeds, with a floury bloom on his face and hair and an anxious depressed expression. He was clearly a baker. He sat forward as though he nursed something precious under the table. Next him was a respectable-looking, regular-featured fair man with a large head, and a ruddy-faced butcher-like individual smoked a clay pipe by the side of the fireplace. A further individual with an alert intrusive look might have been a grocer’s assistant associating above himself. “Evening,” said the Captain. “Evening,” said the man with the large hand guardedly. The Captain came to the hearthrug with an affectation of ease. “I suppose,” he began, “that you haven’t any of you seen anything of a small boy, wandering about. He’s a little chap about thirteen. Sturdy, resolute-looking little fellow with a high colour, short wiry hair, rather dark....” He stopped short, arrested by the excited movements of the butcher’s pipe and by the changed expressions of the rest of the company. “We—we seen ’im,” the man with the big head managed to say at last. “We seen ’im all right,” said a voice out of the darkness beyond the range of the lamp. The baker with the melancholy expression interjected, “I don’t care if I don’t ever see ’im again.” “Ah!” said the Captain, astonished to find himself suddenly beyond hoping on a hot fresh scent. “Now all that’s very interesting. Where did you see him?” “Thunderin’ vicious little varmint,” said the butcher. “Owdacious.”