Then a horn sounded, and with a convulsive start the creature was off his lap and scratching and yapping at the closed door. Will, too, had a moment of wild wishing he had engaged a seat in the cart—the thought of walking in this heat was no longer alluring—but it was equally unimaginable to get up now and rush like the animal. Besides, he hadn’t paid his bill, he remembered not discontentedly. Meanwhile the distracted little dog had darted back to the window and leapt on the sill, but it was obviously cowering before the depth of the jump. He was feeling he really must get up and do its will, when to the satisfaction of the slothful man and the bliss of the active beast, the door opened, and like a streak of lightning the white figure had forked across the room and vanished. He turned his head lazily to the window to see if it would catch its cart, but was only in time to see the tail-board with his own box disappearing through the archway, pursued by Joe with a belated bundle. Then the new-comers claimed his languorous attention. V Strictly speaking, there was only one new-comer and he was hanging back at the sight of the London-tailored guest, being himself in moleskins and bent and fusty, though Mother Gander was clearly beckoning him forward. “The gentleman’s just going,” she said sweetly. Will knew not whether to be drowsily pleased at the status he had achieved in his own neighbourhood, or sluggishly wrathful at this renewed attempt to be rid of him. “Plenty left,” he observed encouragingly, puffing immovably. “Oi reckon, sister, Oi’ll feed in the taproom.” The voice sent strange vibrations of resentment through Will’s being, and particularly through his nostrils, where a mysterious smell of aniseed was called up, whether from memory or the actual moleskins he could not make out. “You’ll do no such thing,” said Mother Gander sharply. “It’s less trouble here. Remember what James says.” Who was James—was her husband not Charley?—Will was wondering dreamily. “Chapter two, warse two—Oi take your p’int,” answered this odd figure, whose wizened face with the straggling whiskers seemed loathsomely familiar. But though the beady eyes under the moleskin cap were turned for a moment full on his, remembrance stirred but feebly through his after-dinner lethargy, and it was not till the intruder had sinuously and softly skirted the great dining-table and begun solemnly turning the faces of the hunting pictures to the wall, like naughty schoolchildren, that he was dully conscious of the secret of his abhorrence. There—on the very first day of his return—was Joshua Mawhood, the button-snipping villain of his story!