He tried to shake himself clear of the influences which were now at work on him. He moved forward a step or two, and looked up. Zack?--where was Zack? Away, at the other end of the solitary suburban street, just visible sauntering along and swinging his stick in his hand. Without knowing why he did so, Mat turned instantly and walked after him, calling to him to come back. The third summons reached him: he stopped, hesitated, made comic gesticulations with his stick in the air--then began to retrace his steps. The effort of walking and calling after him, had turned Mat’s thoughts in another direction. They now occupied themselves again with the hints that Zack had dropped of some incomprehensible connection between a Hair Bracelet, and the young girl who was called by the strange name of “Madonna.” With the remembrance of this, there came back also the recollection of the letter about a bracelet, and its enclosure of hair, which he had examined in the lonely cattle-shed at Dibbledean, and which still lay in the little box bearing on it the name of “Mary Grice.” “Well!” cried Zack, speaking as he came on. “Well, Cupid! what do you want with me now?” Mat did not immediately answer. His thoughts were still traveling back cautiously over the ground which they had already explored. Once more, he was pondering on that little circle of plaited hair, having gold at each end, and looking just big enough to go round a woman’s wrist, which he had seen in the drawer of Mr. Blyth’s bureau. And once again, the identity between this object and the ornament which young Thorpe had described as being the thing called a Hair Bracelet, began surely and more surely to establish itself in his mind. “Now then, don’t keep me waiting,” continued Zack, laughing again as he came nearer; “clap your hand on your heart, and give me your tender message for the future Mrs. Marksman.” It was on the tip of Mat’s tongue to emulate the communicativeness of young Thorpe, and to speak unreservedly of what he had seen in the drawer of the bureau--but he suddenly restrained the words just as they were dropping from his lips. At the same moment his eyes began to lose their vacant perturbed look, and to brighten again with something of craft and cunning, added to their customary watchful expression. “What’s the young woman’s real name?” he asked carelessly, just as Zack was beginning to banter him for the third time. “Is that all you called me back for? Her real name’s Mary.” Mat had made his inquiry with the air of a man whose thoughts were far away from his words, and who only spoke because he felt obliged to say something. Zack’s reply to his question startled him into instant and anxious attention. “Mary!” he repeated in a tone of surprise. “What else, besides Mary?”