arise, and he now proceeded, with a few bold, swift touches, to secure the salient points of the likeness which had for him an interest far exceeding that of all the other portraits put together. He left Stavering by the afternoon train that same day, and a few hours later was back at home. CHAPTER XXXIV. ANOTHER LINK. But Clement Hazeldine's business at Stavering was by no means at an end. A certain purpose, the outcome of his visit to Broome, had taken him back to Ashdown; but that accomplished to his satisfaction, which it was in the course of a few days, he lost no time in returning to the scene of his further operations. Among other information for which he was indebted to Lucy Grice, he had learned that her uncle, Barney Dale, was in the habit of spending a couple of hours, two or three evenings a week, in the bar-parlor of the "Chequers" Inn at Dritton, where he smoked his pipe and imbibed his tankard of ale in the company of sundry cronies whose tastes in that respect were similar to his own. On inquiry, Clem found that they had one spare bed at the "Chequers," which he at once engaged, and there he proceeded to take up his quarters, leaving his portmanteau, however, in his old lodging at Stavering. Dritton was a tiny hamlet of some three or four hundred inhabitants, and as there were more than one good trout stream in the neighborhood, Clem, who had brought his rod and tackle with him, passed for a disciple of the gentle craft, and was welcomed as such among the frequenters of the bar-parlor. The advent of a stranger who was in no way "stuck-up," and not above hobnobbing with one or another of them, made a pleasant break in the monotony of their meetings, and freshened up their provincial wits for the time in a way which surprised no one more than themselves. But it was to Barney Dale that Clem paid the most assiduous court, so contriving matters as to occupy the seat next his, and to engage him in talk about such subjects as the old man was likely to take an interest in. He soon found that under a somewhat crabbed and forbidding exterior, Barney hid a personality at once quaint and kindly, and, in some respects, of an almost childlike simplicity. On more than one occasion, as they sat side by side, Clem tried to bring the conversation round to Broome and its mistress; but Barney became at once so stolidly dull, and was so evidently disinclined to touch on the subject in any way, that, for fear of rendering him suspicious as to his ulterior motives, he felt it best to lead back the talk into other and less personal channels. It was Clem's object to take the old man unawares, in the hope that, in the first moment of surprise, he might unwittingly let fall some exclamation or remark which would help to indicate the direction in which his next step should be taken.