"Where shall we plant ut? Which is his winder?" "That there near the end. O Lord, what a lark!" "Yes--to think he come talkun to me while you was all in the barn. The cheek! But here's his answer for him." The first and last speaker was the stout young barman from the Plough and Harrow; the other was Jim Cubitt, an unworthy character who had been turned out of the choir some months before. And Robert Carlton's "answer" was his missing dog, lying dead in the lantern's light, with particles of gravel glistening in his lacklustre coat. At this, the climax of his long night's search, with its ironic interludes--all as honey matched with this--a very madness seized on Carlton, so that he sprang out of the dark into the lighted area where these two young ruffians stood, and fell upon them like a fiend. Not a word was said; there was no time even for a cry. But Cubitt came first, and had the muddled senses shaken out of him and new ones kicked in before his comrade could so much as attempt a rescue. This, however, the young barman did so gamely that the ex-chorister was flung in a heap and his champion sent tripping over him with a boxing crack upon the jaw. And Carlton towered breathless, his fists still doubled, waiting for the fallen youths to rise and fall again. The one from the public-house merely sat upright, ruefully and sullenly enough, but with a sound discretion which the Long Stow lout had the wit to imitate. "_We_ never 'urt your dorg," the former vowed. "He was dead before I see him, and I don't know now who done ut. I never knew anything about that till after you was in to-night, when I heared who it must ha' been." "I don't care!" cried Carlton, in a fury still. "You helped to drag it here--my poor dog! You would spite me like that, you whom I never saw before to-night! You're worse than Jim Cubitt; he at least had an old grievance against me; and you're both of you worse than the man who did this foul thing, whoever he may be, and I don't want to know. Out of my sight, both of you, and spread this as far as you please: what you got from me, and what you did to get it. You'll find yourselves the martyrs of the countryside!" "I'm sorry," said the young barman, getting up. "I'm sorry, and I can't say no fairer, 'cept that I must ha' been an' got right tight. But I ain't tight now. I'm not a Long Stow chap, sir, and I shall tell them, where I come from, that you're a man, whatever else you are. But as to spreadun, I don't think I shall do much o' that; what do you say, mate?" "I never killed his dog," said the former choirman.