to the tinker.

"It's a bargain;" quoth the tinker, "eh, missus?"

His cat replied by humping her back at the dog.

The half-crown was tossed down, and Ripton, who had just succeeded in
freeing his limbs from the briar, prickly as a hedgehog, collared the
loaf.

"Those young squires be sharp-set, and no mistake," said the tinker to
his companion. "Come! we'll to Bursley after 'em, and talk it out over a
pot o' beer." Speed-the-Plough was nothing loath, and in a short time
they were following the two lads on the road to Bursley, while a
horizontal blaze shot across the autumn and from the Western edge of the
rain-cloud.




CHAPTER IV

Search for the missing boys had been made everywhere over Raynham, and
Sir Austin was in grievous discontent. None had seen them save Austin
Wentworth and Mr. Morton. The baronet sat construing their account of
the flight of the lads when they were hailed, and resolved it into an act
of rebellion on the part of his son. At dinner he drank the young heir's
health in ominous silence. Adrian Harley stood up in his place to
propose the health. His speech was a fine piece of rhetoric. He warmed
in it till, after the Ciceronic model, inanimate objects were