means, Christopher, hide-and-seek is an easy game when it’s over,” he explained. “Come and show me where you live.”

They walked back towards the carriage together. The elderly gentleman holding the reins was looking back at them; so was the groom. The elderly gentleman cast a puzzled, inquiring glance from the boy to his companion as they came near.

“Fortune meets us on the road-side, Stapleton,” said the owner of the phaeton. “Let me introduce you to Christopher Hibbault. Get up, child.”

Get up? Mount that quietly magnificent carriage, ride behind those beautiful animals with their pawing feet and arched necks? The small boy stood still a moment to appreciate the greatness of the event.

“Are you afraid, Christopher?”

Resentment sprang to life. Yet it was almost well so transcendent a moment should have its pin prick of annoyance. With a “No” of ineffable scorn, Jim—or Christopher—the name was immaterial to him—clambered up into the high carriage and wedged 8 himself between the elderly gentleman and the inquisitive driver, who had regained his seat and the reins.

Christopher’s experiences of driving were of a very limited nature, and certainly they did not embrace anything like this. He had no recollection of ever having travelled by train, and it was the question of pace that fascinated him, the rapid, easy swinging movement through the air, the fresh breeze rushing by, the distancing of humbler wayfarers, all gave him a strange sense of exhilaration. Years afterward, when flesh and blood were all too slow for him and he was one of the best motorists in England, if not in Europe, he used to recall the rapturous pleasure of that first drive of his, that first introduction to the mad, tense joy of speed that ever after held him in thrall.

The owner of the phaeton and the elderly gentleman whom he had called Stapleton exchanged no remarks, but they both cast curious, thoughtful glances at their small companion from time to time. They had to rouse him from his rhapsody to ask the way at last. He answered concisely and shortly with no touch of the local burr.

“How came you to be so far away?” demanded Jim’s fine gentleman as they were passing through the market-place.

Jim was engaged in superciliously ignoring the amazed stares of the town boys who were apt to look down on the “workhouse kid,” though he attended the Whitmansworth school. Once past them he answered the question vaguely.

“The master was out: I hadn’t to do anything.”

“And you had permission to wander where you liked?”

To this Jim did not reply. He had not permission, but he counted on the good nature of Mrs. Moss, with 9 whom he was a favourite, to plead his cause with her husband.

“Had you permission?” demanded his questioner again, bending down suddenly to look in the boy’s face with his disconcerting eyes.

It would have seemed to Jim on reflection a great deal more prudent and quite as easy to have said “yes” as “no,” but the “no” slipped out, and the questioner smiled, not ill-pleased.

At last they came to a standstill before the door of the Whitmansworth Union. Jim, with a prodigious sigh, prepared to descend. The glorious adventure was over. Also he prepared to slip away to a more lowly entrance, but was stopped by a retaining hand.

The porter, no friend of Jim’s, stared with dull amazement at the apparition of the fine turn-out, and the still finer gentleman waiting on the doorstep with that little “varmint” of a Hibbault. He signed to the boy angrily to begone, as he ushered the visitor in.

“The boy will stay with me,” said the owner of the phaeton quietly, and they were accordingly shown into that solemn sanctum, the Board Room. It was a cheerful room with flowers in the window and a long green-covered table with comfortable chairs on each side, but it struck a cold note of discomfort in Jim’s heart. The first time he had entered it, about six months ago, the chairs had been occupied by ten more or less portly gentlemen who informed him that his mother, now being dead (she had died two days previously), they had decided to give him a home for the present, and would educate him and teach him a trade, and that he should be very grateful and must be a good boy.

Jim had said tearfully he would rather go back to London and Mrs. Sartin, which appeared to surprise them very much, and they were at some pains to point out the advantages of a country life, which did not appeal 10 to him at all. Then one of them, who had not spoken before, said abruptly, “his mother had wished him to stay there, and there was an end of it.”

That was six months ago. Jim remembered it all very distinctly as he waited with his companion in the Board Room.

Mr. Moss bustled in: he was a stout, cheerful man of hasty temper, but withal a man one could deal with—through his wife—in Jim’s estimation.

He held the card the visitor had sent in between his fingers and looked flurried and surprised. Jim noticed he bowed to the stranger, but did not offer to shake hands as he did with the doctor and parson and the few rare visitors the boy had observed. So Jim concluded his gentleman was a very great gentleman indeed, as he had all along suspected.

“My name is Aston—Charles Aston”—said the owner of the phaeton in his pleasant voice. “I have driven down from London to make inquiries about a small boy I have reason to believe came under your care about seven months ago: Hibbault by name.”

“Yes, sir,—Mr. Aston,” said Mr. Moss, assuming an air of importance, “and that is the boy himself.”

“A good boy, I hope?” He bestowed on him one of those keen, sharp glances Jim was beginning not to resent.

“Not bad as boys go,” Mr. Moss answered dubiously, scratching his chin, “but his bringing up has been against him. London, sir,—and then tramping about the country for a year.”

Jim regarded Mr. Aston anxiously to see how this somewhat negative character struck him, but he was still looking at Jim and seemed to pay small heed to Mr. Moss’s words.

“We passed him on the road,” he said; “I was struck by the likeness to someone I knew, and I 11 thought there could not be two boys so like in Whitmansworth. You were master here when he was admitted?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Aston. It was in November last, on a Thursday night, I remember, because service was on. The mother was clean exhausted, and was taken to the infirmary at once and––”

Mr. Aston interposed.

“Christopher, go out and stay by the carriage till I call you, and ask the gentleman—Mr. Stapleton—to come in here.”

And James Christopher Hibbault obeyed without so much as a glance for permission at Mr. Moss.

He delivered his message and then interviewed the groom, who seemed used to waiting. The tea bell rang, but Jim, though hungry, never thought of disobeying his orders. The hall porter came out and went off on his bicycle and presently returned with Mr. Page, one of the Board gentlemen.

The groom eventually grew communicative and told Jim the horses’ names were Castor and Pollux, and there wasn’t their match in the country, no more in all London, though to be sure Mr. Aston had some fine horses at Marden Court.

“Is that where he lives?” inquired Jim.

It appeared he lived there sometimes, but Mr. Nevil,—Jim did not know who that was—lived there mostly. Mr. Aston spent most of his time in London with Mr. Aymer. They had left London the previous day, Jim learnt, and had been driving to queer out-of-the-way places, always stopping at Unions.

At which point the door opened and Mr. Aston came out, and with him Mr. Page and Mr. and Mrs. Moss and Mr.