And Clement saw it all and rejoiced in it all, though his eyes never ceased to search for a dour-looking man with a bruised face. He rejoiced in the cantering horses and the abounding life about him, in the freedom of it and the joyousness of it, his pulses leaping in tune with it; and not the less in tune, so splendid a thing is it to be young and in love, because he had fought a fight and slept only three hours. He watched it all pass before him, and if he had ever believed in his father’s scheme of an iron way and iron horses he lost faith in it now. For it was impossible to believe that any iron road running across fields and waste places could vie with this splendid highway, this orderly procession of coaches, travelling and stopping and meeting with the regularity of a weaver’s shuttle, these long lines of laden wagons, these swift chaises horsed at every stage! He saw stables that sheltered a hundred roadsters and were not full; ostlers to whom a handful of oats in every peck gave a gentleman’s income; teams that were clothed and curried as tenderly as children; mighty caravanserais full to the attics. A whole machinery of transport passed under his wondering eyes, and the railway, the Valleys Railway—he smiled at it as at the dream of a visionary. They swept through Northwich before noon, and an hour later Clement dropped off the coach in front of the Bowling Green Inn at Altringham, and knew that his task lay before him. The little town had no church, but it boasted for its size more bustle than he had expected, and as he eyed its busy streets and its flow of traffic his spirits sank; it did not call itself one of the gates of Manchester for nothing. However, he had not come to stand idle, and the first step, to seek out a constable, was easy. But to secure that worthy’s aid—he was but a deputy, a pot-bellied, spectacled shoemaker—was another matter. The man rolled up his leather apron and pushed his horn-rimmed glasses on to his forehead, but he shook his head. “A very desperate villain,” he said, “a very desperate villain! But lor’, master, a dark sullen chap with a black eye and legs a little bandy? Why, I be dark and I be bandy, and for black eyes—I’m afeared there’s more than one o’ that cut on the road.” “But not to-day,” Clement urged. “He’ll come through to-day or to-night.” “Ay, and more likely night than day. But how be I to see if he’s a blackened peeper in the dark! I can’t haul a gentleman off a coach to ask the color of his eyes.” “Well, anyway, do your best.” “We might bill him and cry him?” “That’s it! Do that!” Clement saw that that was about the extent of the help he would get in this quarter. “Send the crier to me at the Bowling Green, and I’ll write a bill—Five pounds reward for information!” The constable’s eyes twinkled. “Now you’re on a line, master,” he said. “Now we’ll do summat, maybe!”