The track goes straight to the road, but on reaching it swerves aside, baffled by a hedge, or the memory of what was once a hedge, whose function has been reinforced by barbed wire; probably the last expiring effort of a pastoral age to induce sheep to remain on the land and be tempted by the dirty grass. The swerved footsteps follow on to an opening two sad stumps face one another in, and think, perhaps, at times of the days when they were a stile, and real villagers stepped over them, and distant London was unknown. Then the track is lost for a space in a maze of other tracks of men on their way to brew, to bottle stout chemically, to appropriate sewage, that artificial food may be stocked, in tins, for a race with powers of digestion up to date. Then is found again, and followed on to a canal-bank with Platonic locks that sleep sometimes from day's end to day's end, bargeless, and dream of a past when railways were unknown, and they were full of purpose, and the world was young. And then is lost again, at a bridge. Stragglers are gathering round, anxious to satisfy curiosity about the nature of the search; also anxious to impart information about its object, whether possessed of any or not. Willingness to further the public interest, without any qualifications of data to go upon, is often a serious hindrance to the end in view. In this case several casuals, who have _not_ seen a man in his shirt-sleeves, without ne'er a hat on, go by, are so anxious to mould the particulars of something else they _have_ seen into a plausible substitute for information about the said man, that the necessity for hearing enough of their evidence to reject it becomes an obstacle trying to the patience of the searchers. It seems injudicious to snub a volunteer informant who see a party go along the road in the opposite direction rather better than an hour ago, with a sack over his head and shoulders, who "might have been a dorg-fancier, to look at, in the manner of describing him," and to tell him to shut up if he can't go any nearer than that; not only because this drastic treatment may discourage other informants who have really something to tell, but because, being put on his mettle, he proceeds to adjust his evidence to the facts, so far as he can ascertain them. He removes the sack from the head of his recollection, makes it walk the other way at any acceptable time; won't undertake, now you ask so partic'lar, that it hadn't shirt-sleeves, and surrenders the dog-fancier in favour of any vocation you are inclined to put a leading question about. In like manner, a party sim'lar to you describe come straight--according to other proffered testimony--acrost yarnder open ground to this very self-same spot, and so forrard over the bridge to'ards the Princess Charlotte down the lane, and went in at the bar. But the photographic likeness of this person to any description you choose to give of the man sought for fails to establish the identity of