March wind swirled boisterously down Grellingham Place, catching up
particles of grit and scraps of paper on his way and making them a
torment to the passers-by, just as though the latter were not already
amply occupied in trying to keep their hats on their heads.

But the blustering fellow cared nothing at all about that as he drove
rudely against them, slapping their faces and blinding their eyes with
eddies of dust; on the contrary, after he had swept forwards like a
tornado for a matter of fifty yards or so he paused, as if in search of
some fresh devilment, and espied a girl beating her way up the street and
carrying a roll of music rather loosely in the crook of her arm. In an
instant he had snatched the roll away and sent the sheets spread-eagling
up the street, looking like so many big white butterflies as they flapped
and whirled deliriously hither and thither.

The girl made an ineffectual grab at them and then dashed in pursuit,
while a small greengrocer's boy, whose time was his master's (ergo, his
own), joined in the chase with enthusiasm.

Given a high wind, and half-a-dozen loose sheets of music, the elusive
quality of the latter seems to be something almost supernatural, not to
say diabolical, and the pursuit would probably have been a lengthy one
but for the fact that a tall man, who was rapidly advancing from the
opposite direction, seeing the girl's predicament, came to her help and
headed off the truant sheets. Within a few moments the combined efforts
of the girl, the man, and the greengrocer's boy were successful in
gathering them together once more, and having tipped the boy, who had
entered thoroughly into the spirit of the thing and who was grinning
broadly, she turned, laughing and rather breathless, to thank the man.

But the laughter died suddenly away from her lips as she encountered the
absolute lack of response in his face. It remained quite grave and
unsmiling, exactly as though its owner had not been engaged, only two
minutes before, in a wild and undignified chase after half-a-dozen sheets
of paper which persisted in pirouetting maddeningly just out of reach.

The face was that of a man of about thirty-five, clean-shaven and
fair-skinned, with arresting blue eyes of that peculiar piercing quality
which seems to read right into the secret places of one's mind. The
features were clear-cut--straight nose, square chin, the mouth rather
sternly set, yet with a delicate uplift at its