e, and took the London
road to Huntingdon, which runs high all the way to Alconbury. I was
getting jolly tired and wondering if I should find a decent bed before I
reached Huntingdon, when I came to Saxon Cross. At the cross-roads
stands a fine inn all by itself, and to judge by the names and addresses
in the visitors' book, it is nearly as well known in America as in
England. The Saxon Cross Hotel is not really a hotel at all, being a
hunting inn. But it is very comfortable, with brushes hung all round
the walls and fine old engravings of sporting scenes in all the rooms.

"At first I only went into the bar-parlour to get a drink. It was rather
dark in there, for it was very near sunset and the windows were small,
and I had slipped off my knapsack and dropped into a big comfortable
chair before I noticed a clean-shaven man with a big hooked nose and
gleaming eyes seated in the far corner. It was like the beak of a bird,
that nose, and I was so fascinated by it that I didn't answer the
landlord when he came in and said 'Good evening.' The man opposite said
'Good evening' too, so I suppose that it must have been just a mistaken
idea of mine, but I really thought at first that he had something
against me, his glance was so confoundedly malevolent. He was a tall
young chap in a Norfolk suit with a soft silk collar and scarlet tie,
russia-leather shoes and a watch in an alligator case on his left wrist.
A gentleman evidently by the look of him and when he said to me, in the
refined voice of the ordinary university man, 'Are you walking down
country?' I made up my mind that he was O. K. and began to converse.

"One thing rather puzzled me, and that was the fact that he and the
landlord did not speak to each other. While I was drinking my whisky
they both talked to me and I to them, but they did not exchange a word.
I thought it was strange that a landlord should ignore a guest like
that, especially as the guest didn't look as if he would stand much
ignoring. Indeed, there was a sort of glint in his dark eyes as he made
the most ordinary remark that struck me as particularly baleful.
However, we talked of the floods and my tramp and hunting, etc., and
finally I decided to stop the night there. The landlord went off to
order supper and my new friend came over and sat down beside me. Somehow
or other I found myself talking over old times. On thinking the matter
over I have come to the conclusion that it was his use of one or tw