yards' distance stopped dead. I knew why. He had come to the
cross-roads, and it was evident from his movements that he was puzzled
and uncertain. He went to the corners of each way: it seemed to me that
he was seeking for a guide-post. But, as I knew very well, there was no
guide-post at any corner, and presently he came to the middle of the
roads again and stood, looking this way and that, as if still in a
dubious mood. And then I heard a crackling and rustling as of stiff
paper--he was never more than a dozen yards from me all the time,--and in
another minute there was a spurt up of bluish flame, and I saw that the
man had turned on the light of an electric pocket-torch and was shining
it on a map which he had unfolded and shaken out, and was holding in his
right hand.

At this point I profited by a lesson which had been dinned into my ears
a good many times since boyhood. Andrew Dunlop, Maisie's father, was one
of those men who are uncommonly fond of lecturing young folk in season
and out of season. He would get a lot of us, boys and girls, together in
his parlour at such times as he was not behind the counter and give us
admonitions on what he called the practical things of life. And one of
his favourite precepts--especially addressed to us boys--was "Cultivate
your powers of observation." This advice fitted in very well with the
affairs of the career I had mapped out for myself--a solicitor should
naturally be an observant man, and I had made steady effort to do as
Andrew Dunlop counselled. Therefore it was with a keenly observant eye
that I, all unseen, watched the man with his electric torch and his
map, and it did not escape my notice that the hand which held the map
was short of the two middle fingers. But of the rest of him, except that
he was a tallish, well-made man, dressed in--as far as I could see
things--a gentlemanlike fashion in grey tweeds, I could see nothing. I
never caught one glimpse of his face, for all the time that he stood