“It was the shock of this disappointment, perhaps, coming soon after the loss of his wife, that had driven him crazy on that point,” the barber suggested, with an air of great psychological insight. After a time the old man abandoned the active search. His son had evidently gone away; but he settled himself to wait. His son had been once at least in Colebrook in preference to his native place. There must have been some reason for it, he seemed to think, some very powerful inducement, that would bring him back to Colebrook again. “Ha, ha, ha! Why, of course, Colebrook. Where else? That’s the only place in the United Kingdom for your long-lost sons. So he sold up his old home in Colchester, and down he comes here. Well, it’s a craze, like any other. Wouldn’t catch me going crazy over any of my youngsters clearing out. I’ve got eight of them at home.” The barber was showing off his strength of mind in the midst of a laughter that shook the tap-room. Strange, though, that sort of thing, he would confess, with the frankness of a superior intelligence, seemed to be catching. His establishment, for instance, was near the harbour, and whenever a sailor-man came in for a hair-cut or a shave--if it was a strange face he couldn’t help thinking directly, “Suppose he’s the son of old Hagberd!” He laughed at himself for it. It was a strong craze. He could remember the time when the whole town was full of it. But he had his hopes of the old chap yet. He would cure him by a course of judicious chaffing. He was watching the progress of the treatment. Next week--next month--next year! When the old skipper had put off the date of that return till next year, he would be well on his way to not saying any more about it. In other matters he was quite rational, so this, too, was bound to come. Such was the barber’s firm opinion. Nobody had ever contradicted him; his own hair had gone grey since that time, and Captain Hagberd’s beard had turned quite white, and had acquired a majestic flow over the No. 1 canvas suit, which he had made for himself secretly with tarred twine, and had assumed suddenly, coming out in it one fine morning, whereas the evening before he had been seen going home in his mourning of broadcloth. It caused a sensation in the High Street--shopkeepers coming to their doors, people in the houses snatching up their hats to run out--a stir at which he seemed strangely surprised at first, and then scared; but his only answer to the wondering questions was that startled and evasive, “For the present.”