"Ho, you're Tommy, are you?" he cried almost jovially. I saw a face of angry suspicion smooth itself out to one of merry kindness; and instinctively I smiled my broadest. "So you're Tommy, eh?" repeated the man, whom somehow I immediately knew to be Abou's master; perhaps by his voice, but rather as I think because of a lurking shadow of uneasiness in his kindly grey eyes. I had seen just such a look on my father's face when danger was imminent. It was the look of the hunted which I knew so well. And I knew this man was in hiding from some inveterate foe; he too lived with an enemy ever on his trail. For a moment we stood facing each other, for my part still smiling, and growing reassured as the merry lines about his eyes puckered and wrinkled with amusement. It seemed as though somehow I had found favour with him, for a child is quick to read the signs of affection in a stranger. And I know I felt a glow of heart as though I had stumbled on a friend; for his face was one of the kindest I had seen, and the lurking sadness, and something haunting and elusive in the whole expression, appealed to my sense of the romantic and mysterious. For already I knew there was a sorrow and a mystery in the life of this new friend of mine, and his face bore witness to the shadow amidst the sunshine. It was the kind of face I would have given to some favourite sea-captain of my imagination; a face to love and yet to fear a little, with that kind of fear which is a delight, for it carries with it a sense of trust and reverence; and a face to wonder at and brood upon, for it was eloquent of old adventures and far sojournings and strange and secret things. What prompted me to speak as I did, I can't say. I think something of my father's power of acting was born in me, for more than once in my life I have found myself playing a part with such ease and naturalness as for a while to have deceived even myself. And now I suddenly reverted to a simple, confiding, unsuspecting child, though half wondering what made me assume such a mask. "Everybody calls me Tommy," I said. "And I go to school at Rancey Bridge, 'way yonder, but I hate it, because they won't let me play when I want to, and they've taken away my knife. But"--and here I looked cautiously round, and slowly drawing my pistol held it out to the stranger, saying--"but they don't know I've got this." He chuckled merrily, and taking the pistol turned it over in his hands, while I watched him. He seemed to be hiding something behind his smile, something I couldn't quite read. I held out my hand and said, "I want it back, please;" and he gave it me, asking, "And do you know how to use it, my little man?" "See," I said, raising it and taking aim, "I can hit that ousel." "No," he cried quickly, "no. Poor thing!" "Poor thing?" I said enquiringly. "Well, there," he passed it over. "Put up your pistol; you may need it. I can see we're going to be great friends." Again his eyes surveyed me twinklingly.