is—who was the precise person whom Hollis went to meet?"
"Are you going to tell all that to Starmidge?" asked Betty admiringly. "Because I'm sure it's never entered his head—so far."
"Depends," replied Neale. "Let's see if the tinker has anything to tell. He's at home, anyway. There's his fire."
A spiral of blue smoke, curling high above the green and gold of the gorse bushes, revealed Creasy's whereabouts. He had shifted his camp since their first meeting with him: his tilted cart, his tethered pony, and his fire, were now in a hollow considerably nearer the town. Neale and Betty looked down into his retreat to find him busily mending a collection of pots and pans, evidently gathered up during his round of the previous day. He greeted his visitors with a smile, and fetched a three-legged stool from his cart for Betty's better accommodation.
"Heard anything?" asked Neale, seating himself on a log of wood.
The tinker pointed to several newspapers which lay near at hand, kept from blowing away by a stone placed on the uppermost.
"Only what's in these," he answered. "I've read all that—so I'm pretty well posted up, mister. I've just read this morning's—bought it in the town when I went to fetch some bread. Queer affair altogether, I call it!"
"Have you looked round about at all?" asked Betty.
"I've been a good bit over the Hollow, miss," an-
