inconsequentially. "It is quite a pleasure to see any one looking so pretty and blooming."

Ignoring the incongruity between the guest's mysterious prelude and his crudely outspoken appreciation of her charms, Miss Popkiss was not above accepting the tribute to her good looks. "Oh, sir," she said with a touch of protest just sufficient to maintain her propriety; and so waited for the order to which the compliment would have been a natural preamble.

The guest pursed his lips and kept his small eyes on her with business-like admiration. "Very busy, eh?" he suggested, absurdly enough, since he appeared to be the only customer in the house. "Any one fresh staying here?" he asked with an obvious affectation of indifference.

"No, we've had no one fresh to-day, sir," Miss Popkiss answered, beginning to lose interest in the colloquy.

"Oh," said the man, blinking his eyes suspiciously. "Are you quite sure? No one been here to-day?"

His manner was so exaggerated in its significance that Miss Popkiss, with Mr. Sparrow's clandestine visit fresh in her mind, grew uneasy under it. "No, sir," she answered, a trifle unconvincingly. "Who should there have been?"

A triumphant gleam shot through her questioner's eyes. He dropped his cross-examiner's manner and said confidentially, "I thought I saw some one come in just now."

So it was Tom. Miss Popkiss flushed a little guiltily.

"By the door?" she suggested evasively.

"Or by the window," he hazarded, with noncommittal sagacity.

Miss Popkiss concluded that further equivocation was futile.

"Well, sir, and if you did, what about it?" she demanded defiantly.

Her cross-examiner saw that he had made a lucky hit. "Oh," he answered, assuming a careless manner "I only looked in to warn you, in case he has been making up to you, that he is a bad lot, a wrong 'un altogether; so don't you have anything to do with him."

Had the speaker's searching little eyes not been attracted elsewhere they must have noticed a peculiar agitation of the table-cloth greater than the draught would account for.

"Why, you don't mean to say he makes love to any one else," Miss Popkiss asked, between wrath and jealousy.

"Dozens, dozens," the visitor replied cheerfully. "Every girl he meets. All that sort do."

"Two can play at that game," the lady commented resentfully.

"Yes," he agreed waggishly: "it takes two to play it properly. Now, look here, my dear," he added with an abrupt return to business; "I'll talk to him. You just tell me where he is."

"Oh, no, sir," Miss Popkiss returned resolutely; "you just leave him to me. I'll do the talking."

But her interviewer did not seem content, for reasons of his own, that the matter should be taken out of his hands.

"Now just let me see him, there's a dear," he urged coaxingly. "Do, there's a little darling," he pleaded, becoming somewhat unreasonably affectionate. "I'll put some salt on his tail."

"Please, no; I'd rather you didn't, sir," returned Miss Popkiss with decision, as though feeling quite competent to perform the condimentary operation herself.

"All in the way of business," the visitor persisted, rubbing his stubby hands together with anticipatory gusto. Then, before the young lady could realize it, one of the stumpy arms had stolen round her waist. "Give me a kiss and tell me where to find him, and I'll knock the stuffing out of the rascal," he whispered insinuatingly.

But Miss Popkiss was not so easily got round. "Don't, sir! What would father say?" she protested with a vigour which was likewise included in the action with which she released herself; an action performed with such adroitness as to give the impression that this was owed to its being frequently called for.

"Where is he, my sweetie?" persisted the curious one, in no wise abashed by his repulse.

Next moment the question was answered by a crash, as the table was overturned, and there rose, struggling with the hampering folds of its cover, the irate form of Mr. Thomas Sparrow.

CHAPTER II

With a vicious kick at the encumbering and undignified table-cover, Mr. Sparrow, green with passion, advanced upon his supposed traducer, who backed away in a composite attitude of protest, authority, and apprehension.

"Oh, Tom!" cried Miss Popkiss ruefully, but Mr. Sparrow had no eyes for her just then.

"Scoundrel, am I? Rascal, am I?" he hissed at the retreating stranger. "I'll show you. I'll give you——"

The other man had backed, by an oversight, into the corner and stood at bay, with an ugly look in his eyes and a thick-set hand stretched out in front of him. "Don't you touch me," he exclaimed warningly, "an officer of the law in the execution of his duty."

The words had a certain effect on Mr. Sparrow, since his threatening fist remained in the air. "What do you want wi' me?" he demanded, with a quiver in his voice which was, perhaps, not altogether the result of righteous anger.

"You are Percy Peckover?" the man suggested.

"You are a liar!" was the ready retort. "I am Thomas Sparrow."

"Yes," corroborated Miss Popkiss, with a remorseful sob; "he is my Tom Sparrow."

The other man began to look doubtful; then he pulled the telegram from his pocket and unfolded it with legal deliberation. "Stop a bit," he said brusquely. "Five foot seven," he glanced up uncompromisingly at the ruffled Sparrow—"You're five foot nine——"

"And a half," put in the person under review.

The other took no notice of the correction, but proceeded with his comparison. "Pale—you are brick-dust; oval face—yours is round enough; dark moustache"; he moved his head quizzingly from side to side as though looking for something not easily distinguishable: "yours is sandy—what there is of it——"

Miss Popkiss gave an hysterical giggle, and Mr. Sparrow, words evidently failing him, merely gurgled and showed his teeth in a discomfited grin.

"Flash dress," read on the detective, outwardly ignoring the effect of his blunt differentiation, "yours is agricultural and shabby."

"Shabby?" Sparrow cried furiously. It was early closing day, and he had been at pains to smarten himself up in his best; added to which he would at any time have deprecated personal criticism in the presence of Miss Popkiss.

But all the apology he got from his tormentor was the terse summing up, as the telegram was refolded, "Description don't tally. You can go."

Gathering that it was no half-forgotten peccadillo that had risen against him, Mr. Sparrow resumed his boldness and eased the curb upon his wrath. "Go?" he cried witheringly. "How about the stuffing? I'll go for you!"

He proceeded to do so in such unmistakable fashion that the arm of the law (being in this case one that was at a disadvantage in the essential of reach) found itself inadequate for its own protection, and was fain to invoke lay assistance which forthwith appeared in the portly form of Host Popkiss.

"Hullo! hullo!" cried that worthy, his high-pitched croak sounding above the scuffle. "What's the matter? I won't have no row on my licensed premises," he protested in fussy indignation, proceeding to separate the combatants with a vigour which made up in authority what it lacked in physique. "Why, Mr. Doutfire!" he exclaimed in horrified amazement as he recognised Sparrow's victim.

"Yes, me, Mr. Popkiss," gasped that gentleman, keeping a vicious eye on his late assailant. "Will you deal with this party, or shall I?" As he spoke he produced and exhibited with a significance which was not lost upon Mr. Sparrow, a pair of highly-polished handcuffs, of a more elegant make than the usual vulgar "darbies" which festoon the blankness of a police-station wall; in effect these were of a pattern de luxe. None the less had they the immediate effect of calming the aggressive Sparrow; to whom, with the severity of the outraged licensee of a highly