“Master Grif, have you seen Pouncer? Other days he does be looking for his dinner long before it’s ready, and to-day he hasn’t come for it at all.” The speaker was Hannah, and her words had an electrical effect on Grif. Instantly there flashed upon his mind a vision of the man with the earrings. What had he wanted? Why should he have come prowling about the house? He turned to Ann. “Where was the man you saw this morning? Where was he going to?” “He was in the wood, and he wasn’t going anywhere. I was under the ash-tree, playing Jonah in his bower, and I saw him through the branches. But when I came out to have a better look he wasn’t there.” The search that followed was rapid and thorough――a search in which Bridget and Hannah and Ann all joined――but no Pouncer was to be found. Then, without saying a word to anyone, bareheaded and in his slippers, and with his breath rising painfully in his throat, Grif rushed down the drive and out on to the road. As he ran towards the town he _knew_ Pouncer had been stolen. His face had lost its colour, and was strained and woebegone, but he had no time for lamentations, he must catch the circus and get Pouncer back. Just outside the town he passed the field where the booth had been pitched. It was bare now, littered with torn papers and rubbish, and the grass was trampled down. Only two or three children were playing near it; there was no sign of his brothers; and Grif ran on to the town. He stopped at the first shop he reached――a butcher’s――to ask which way the circus had gone. The big red-faced butcher was standing at his door taking the air, and Grif was so breathless and incoherent that his question had to be repeated several times before the butcher was able to grasp it. Even then his answer, being mingled with hostile criticisms of the show and of the performers, came with provoking slowness. “They’ll likely be stopping at Rathcarragh,” he at length surmised, “if they get that far without being jailed.” He was dwelling on the improbability of this when he became aware that Grif was no longer with him, and, in astonishment, watched him scudding on down the street. He entered his shop to communicate the tidings to his wife, and Grif tore on at full speed. For he had heard the whistle of an engine, and now saw a white trail of smoke thinly outspread against the sky. Could he do it? His legs were giving under him, and once he fell and cut his stocking and his knee. But he did not stop. Though his heart seemed bursting, and everything swam before his eyes, he ran on; while the white road seem to tilt up steeply in front of him in an impossible hill. He could hear the shrill, rending noise of escaping steam now, and the slamming of doors. Another second or two and he staggered into the station. The train had not yet started, but the guard was waving his flag. Grif sprang at the door of the nearest carriage, which happened to be empty, tugged the handle round, and scrambled in.