call him. He's come here for many a year, at odd times. Camps out with his pony and cart, and goes round the villages and farmsteads, seeing if there's aught to mend, and selling 'em pots and pans and such-like. Stops a week or two—sometimes longer."
"And poaches all he can lay hands on," added the gamekeeper. "Only he takes good care never to go off this Hollow to do it."
"Have you made any inquiry of him?" asked Neale.
"We were just thinking of doing that, sir," replied the policeman. "He roams up and down about here at nights, when he is here. But I don't know how long he's been camping this time—it's very seldom I ever come round this way myself—there's naught to come for."
"Let's go across there and speak to him," said Neale.
He and Betty followed the two men down the side of the promontory and across the ups and downs of the Hollow, until they came to a deeper depression fringed about by a natural palisading of hawthorn. And as they drew near and could see into the dingle-like recess which the tinker had selected for his camping-ground, they became aware of a savoury and appetizing odour, and the gamekeeper laughed.
"Cooking his supper, is Tinner Creasy!" he remarked. "And good stuff he has in his pot, too!"
The tinker, now in full view, sat on a log near a tripod, beneath which crackled a bright fire, burning under a black pot. The leaping flames revealed a shrewd, weather-beaten face which turned sharply to-
